Steampunk Ukulele Machine

How on earth can you go on holiday to relax without an exciting steampunk machine to be considering? This time, a musical steampunk machine. So many ideas, but my son has a Ukulele… These are the plans I bought back, Back home and here’s the ukulele. Now to work out how to fix it down and get it to play! First thing, design and laser cut some lovely ornate clamps, with which to fix the ukulele onto a wonderful polished wooden base, with twiddly sides. I had no idea how large to make the base, but that makes it even more exciting! It’s time to think about fingering. The ukulele has 4 strings, each of which has 13 frets. Normally your fingers would depress the strings just above each fret to play chords, but we have no fingers. Mmmm. Perhaps use grooved bearings driven up and down each string by a really fast stepper motor? It worked! Another huge learning curve, but I learnt how to wire up and use powerful stepper motors to drive 3D printed bearing holders up and down the strings. Each chord could be ‘fingered’ by having the four stepper motors stop just above each fret as quickly as possible. Slotted rubber drive belts provided the perfect driving solution. A row of switches mounted over the bottom of the strings allowed the Arduino to know he position of each one. They are then free to travel up and down the frets as required. Now to work out plucking. It’s one thing to strum with fingers, another to recreate the action mechanically. I’d previously used small but powerful motors in machines. It turned out that strimmer (weed whacker) filament fixed to a bit of wood attached to the end of one of these motors did the trick. Having worked out how to mount 4 over the strings, I thought it necessary to provide pipes to carry cooling air to each motor! The motor driven plucking filaments worked far better than I could ever have expected. We now have chords and plucking! Now we’ve got it playing music, I started off by trying ‘Duelling Banjos’; difficult when you have one ukulele! Plan 2: When I’m Cleaning Windows, by George Formby. I got it playing the tune, but then needed the vocals… …the perfect opportunity for Victoria the automaton. My wife has recorded the vocals. Now I just need to work out how to get Victoria to sing along to the tune! I’ve been inundated with work since - there just aren’t enough hours in the day. As soon as some hours become free, I’ll get on with it! Watch this space… Several months later, and Victoria the singing automaton has a home, and can now sing ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’ accompanied by the ukulele playing machine.