Martian-Harmony

Srishti 2019

The idea was to build a robot that can play musical instruments in the same fashion as humans. It consists of various instruments like Flute, Keyboard, Guitar, etc. All these instruments are being played using different mechanisms.

To read about the working of Flute Playing Bot, click here.

To read about working of Piano Playing Bot, click here.

Motivation:

This is a really good combination of robotics and music. There are many people who don't know how to play instruments but appreciate good music. This band could help those people live their dreams.

Software Information Basics:

• For the mechanical model, designing of the complete setup is done on solidworks and some of the parts are 3D printed using Ultimaker 3D printer.
• We primarily needed to supply all the notes to the respective instruments and also the time at which they needed to be played. Initially we used Image processing to extract the notes using music sheet. The notes extraction was successful but we were not able to locate the time at which a note was to be played/stopped. So we dropped the idea of using a music sheet.
• Then we used MIDI files which are basically digital music files and have the information of all the notes of different instruments and the time at which a particular note is to be played. To extract all this information from the MIDI file we used the java codes given in notes, ON/OFF and the time files.
• We did this for a few songs as only a good MIDI file was available for these much songs and for other songs either the MIDI was not available or a lot of noise was present in the MIDI file. Through MIDI files proper node times were given to the particular instruments.We have to code the instruments using arduino for those particular nodes.Check individual codes for this purpose.

Cost structure:

Flute:

Item used	Quantity	Cost (INR)
Stepper motor	700 x1	700
Servo motor	120 x7	840
Arduino Mega	885 x1	885
BD786Transistor	5 x1	5
Vacuum Cleaner	1650 x1	1650
12V/5A Adapter	400 x1	400
Heat Sink	50 x1	50
Jumper Wires	3 x45	135
Rack & Pinion	280 x1	280
Nuts-Bolts 4mm	0.5 x100	50
Screws	0.5 x20	10
Nails	0.25 x20	5
Rubber Pipe	200 x1	200
T-valve	200 x1	200
Miscellaneous	350	150
TOTAL PRICE		5760

Piano:

Item used	Quantity	Cost (INR)
Solenoidal Motors	534 x10	5340
Stepper Motor	1345 x2	2690
Wooden Board	300 x1	300
Linear Rails	2750 X2	5500
Linear Guides	140 x4	560
Nuts-Bolts 4mm	0.5 x150	75
Rack & Pinion	280 x2	560
Al Channels	50 x1	50
Relay Switches	20 x10	200
Heat Sink	50 x1	50
12V/5A Adapter	400 x1	400
Arduino Mega	885 x1	885
Jumper Wires	3 x150	450
Miscellaneous	1500	1500
TOTAL PRICE		18560

Applications:

We can make an automatic music band with more improvisations and additions. It could also be used for teaching puposes. It could even be used for fun purposes.

Limitations:

• The rack and pinion mechanism used for pressure control in flute wasn't that much accurate and also added some extra noise. We could have used digital pressure controller for blowing air into the flute instead of rack and pinion mechanism. No doubt digital pressure controller would have costed more (around 2.5k inr which is about 10 times the price of rack and pinion controller used) but it would have been much more precise.
• The major difficulty that we faced in piano playing bot was the insufficient power generated by soleniodal motors. We could have used more powerful soleniodal motors for a better bot.

Future Improvements:

We are planning to use digital pressure controller and more powerful soleniodal motors (or any better substitute) in the upcoming versions. We will be including drum kit playing bot in the next version.

Team Members:

1. Aniket Kumar
2. Debaditya Barman
3. Nehal Tembhurne
4. Rishiraj Gupta
5. Shivansh Mathur
6. Shukshi Raj
7. Visvash Attri

Team Mentors:

1. Abhimanyu Bhambaniya
2. Avdesh Ranwa
3. Pradhyuman Mathur
4. Pratikesh Thakur
5. Sarthak Gupta

References:

Flute Playing Bot, click here. Piano Playing Bot, click here.

Team Martian Harmony Srishti'19