HU 3910 – Musical Robotics – C Term, 2023

By: Jakub Jandus, Diego Pena-Stein, Kevin Siegall and Elliot Trilling

Based on a children’s toy from the 80s, the Whirly Tune is a customizable ensemble of corrugated tubes mounted to motors that each produce a unique pitch when spun. Controlled by three separate Raspberry Pi Picos, our design is highly modular and customizable. With a timbre that is both eerie and ethereal Whirly Tune has the potential to be the perfect accompaniment to many performances.

Whirly Tunes is controlled by a serial connection to Ableton via a max patch. This means it can easily perform MIDI pieces or be played in real time via a MIDI keyboard.

Longer Videos of Whirly Tunes Performing: https://photos.app.goo.gl/TkdWcCBszS1eUAHx7

For more information about our design process please see our paper below:

The code we wrote to control our Pi Picos can be found here: https://github.com/Kreeevin/WhirlyBoi