Axehole

Not everyone looks at a vacuum cleaner and “I’m going to turn that mother into a monophonic synthesizer!”

Luckily, Tod E. Kurt thinks different.

Kurt has created RoombaMidi, a Mac OS X application that creates turns the iRobot Roomba roboti vacuum into a MIDI instrument for use by any Mac OS X MIDI sequencer, like Ableton Live, Logic, and others. It can even be played directly from a MIDI keyboard.

Video and more below….

Here’s Kurt’s video of the Roomba Monosynth in action:

Here’s what the interface looks like:

Features

• provides GUI interface to controlling Roomba (MIDI not required)
• acts as normal MIDI interface to any MIDI application
• supports up to 16 Roombas, one per MIDI channel.
• responds to MIDI notes 32-127 as tones on Roomba beeper,
• MIDI notes 32-127 play corresponding pitch, velocity is duration in 1/64ths-second increments
• MIDI note 24 turns vacuum motor on-n-off for bass drum fun
• MIDI note 25 blinks the LEDs, velocity is color of Power LED
• MIDI note 28 & 29 spins left or right, velocity is speed of spin
• can act as general multi-Roomba test system
• written in Java, but acts like Mac OS X application

via todbot