Details on our build and video

We just finished our build.  I did it with my 16-year-old son as a school project.  Some details.  BTW - we were only allowed to spend $100.  My son's school rules.

1) We did our entire project without a soldering iron!
2) We used .75" chrome steel bearings.
3) We used .25" acrylic and simply taped the wireds underneath instead of cutting a channel.
4) We used a triangle of #4 x .5" screws for each bearing location.  One nut holds the screw in place.  Another holds in the wire.  2 screws are grounded and the third is connected to a mux.
5) We used ribbon cable to connect to IDC connectors and finally to a 40-pin DIP plug into the breadboard.
6) The monitor is a 18" LCD ($10 on ebay).  We mounted it and everything else on a large MDF board.
7) We designed the acrylic in Corel Draw and cut it using an Epilog Laser cutter.  http://www.epiloglaser.com/legend_helix.htm
8) We are running the code on an IBM Thinkpad T43 with Windows XP.  We used LoopBe1 as a MIDI router.
9) The acrylic screen is mounted with Velcro.

Video of our Beatbearing in operation at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mubJh96AHNI

Last edited by awolfe63 (2009-05-15 18:30:26)