Solenoid-drums (with video)

Ever since I first saw the first video with solenoids banging away on stuff making beats I have wanted me some of that. I even emailed a lot with that guy who made the NintendoGameboy thing, I promised to help him program the UI but it neven amounted to anything.

I found a few solenoids some years later, but they where huuuuge and scary, really scary. So I never used them for anything (I still have them though). I built the first version for those solenoids, but I was not sure I got the  Transistor part correct so I never really dared hooking them up to my arduino/computer but with the help of this blog and it made me rebuild and retry, this time with really smaller Solenoids.

I reused some old code from the Opal build, that was nice having that on the blog (since I just got my computer stolen and I had not that back upped anywhere else) that reads Midi in via some magic OS X functionality. HOORAY. And then a little tiny tiny Arduino program listening to what the OS X program tells it to initiate the Solenoids. Anyway here is the SolenoidServer.zip and the SolenoidClient.zip

And if you only want to watch the vide, it’s here:

Leave a Reply