- Tuxie McPython – a LEGO bagpiper (or at least a noise machine)
- Learning with mistakes
- A whole week improving fingertips
- Oh yes… programming
- Hot fingers
After some attempts, decided to gave up (at least for now) using LEGO parts as fingertips. Even the LEGO rubber pads were too hard and narrow to close enough the holes for the chanter to play something that reminds music – for instance I could not notice any difference between a G (all holes closed) and a A (opening just the hole near the chanter endpoint).
I tried Technic rubber links and even rubber tires… no luck.
So I started with small circles of EVA foam glued to LEGO 2×2 dishes attached to the same Technic connectors I was using with the LEGO rubber pads. It looked much like those ear pads used on headphones… and then I remembered that Neil Fraser used exactly that for his Robotic Bagpipe Chanter:
These new fingertips improved sound quality but only for the higher notes.. still having problems with G, A, B…
Adding adhesive felt pads didn’t make it better.
But replacing EVA foam with packaging protective foam (not sure what material it is made off) made a big difference:
Great, I can finally produce distinguishable notes! Still far from perfection because air pressure inside the balloon has a strong influence on note pitch and sometimes the reed sounds very bad (and sometimes doesn’t sound at all)… but it’s still a major milestone:
So what’s next? Oh yes… programming.