Last year for a TEDx Event I built a hand bell playing robot as an exhibit. (See https://youtu.be/IeXUfnC5DCs) Bot DingsALot is a machine that plays music using handbells. It is built on a Raspberry Pi platform using Adafruit's PWM Servo Hats. There are twenty finely tuned bells that in conjunction can make beautiful music. I have had this piece on exhibit a number of times so I also added a MIDI keyboard controller to allow an onlooker to interact with the bell machine. It also has a 'jukebox' mode where songs can be selected by a user or can be played on random.
Through this challenge I would like to rebuild it to include the Raspberry 3B+, rewrite all of the Python scripting for it and make it open on GitHub, and I'd like to find some way to make it interactive through the internet so that YOU can log into it and make it play songs in realtime. If I am able to I would really like to extend the range by another five bells, but that will require rebuilding the entire frame and making it bigger. If I made it much bigger than it is now, then I won't be able to move it in my car anymore, LOL. There may be a way to figure that out though. Another thing is right now it uses cheaper plastic geared servos and those seem to break at the worse times. I would like to replace all of those with the fancier metal geared servos so that they won't break as often.
I welcome questions, comments, and suggestions. Thank you for checking Bot DingsALot out!
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