glockenspiel

Introduction

glockenspiel is an Arduino sketch that plays MIDI files from an SD card on a set of chimes. The circuit consists of an Arduino Mega 2560 Rev 3, a Sparkfun TransmogriShield, a Sparkfun CC3000 wifi/SD shield, 19 solenoids and drivers, 19 chimes made from electrical conduit, and 5 lighted buttons.

The five buttons control the glockenspiel: stop/start, play/pause, skip backward, skip forward, and shuffle.

This is a work in progress. Project status is updated in the blog at https://needhamia.com/

Files

• glockenspiel.ino is the Arduino sketch
• SD is a set of files to copy to the SD card. The files include a sample configuration file, a sample playlist, and a set of MIDI files to play.
• glockenspiel.fzz is a Fritzing diagram of the circuit
• BillOfMaterials.ods is a parts list for the project
• MechanicalNotes.odp contains notes about the mechanical design
• buttonIcons.odg is a drawing of the button icons I'd like to use.

Libraries used

• MidiFileStream is a custom library for reading the MIDI files. See https://github.com/bneedhamia/midifilestream
• SDConfigFile is a custom library for reading the sketch configuration from an SD file. See https://github.com/bneedhamia/sdconfigfile
• SD is the standard Arduino SD card library. See http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/SD

Range

The glockenspiel has 19 chromatic notes, ranging through

C5 = An octave above middle C
F#6 = a little over an octave and a fourth above C5

inclusive. This provides enough range to play the melody of a large number of vocal pieces, if the melody is transposed up an octave (e.g., Middle C to C5)