The Pylofon is a wlan-xylophone-robot which can be controlled by internet - but as well by cellphone or a Wiimote. It also plays MIDI-files and time-scheduled random sounds.
We build it in two nights at easter 2008, using 2 Graupner Servos, a 99c-xylophone, a cardbord-box, an Asus WL500gP-wlan-router with OpenWRT Kamikaze and Python 2.5, SSH, a Pololu Serial 8-Servo Controller, an USB to Serial-Adapter, a Bluetooth-Stick and a USB-Memory-Stick.
The Pylofone, Demo I
The Pylofon-Drum-Section, still practicing
Next plans: a better demovideo, web-interface, RSS-import, live-MIDI, drum-section, mode-switch and gpl-python-sourcode.
Last week Kaspar shot and published this photo on flickr - soon it got posted on the make blog which made it climb on reddit too.
Actually the most interesting thing is not the photo (inspired by the transparent screen pool on flickr) - but how fast you can reach more than 65.000 visitors within a couple of days.
We repaired a damaged Apple iBook G3 by heating up its graphic-chip to more than 200° celsius with a cheap heatgun. The amazing howto on Geektechnique was right - after three times heating and re-soldering the pins, the notebook started working again!
