Published on Aug 17, 2014 Rare Beasts
"More info here:
http://grandtippler.wix.com/rarebeast...
The Automaphone is a robotic synth that scans a4 pictures and turns them into songs."
"Have you ever wondered what a picture or drawing sounds like? The Automatphone scans for light and dark areas on the paper and uses the information to set song variables such as tempo, scale, beat, note frequency and length...
The Automaphone uses an old printer mechanism and a basic LDR light sensor to read the information. Lines are scanned to make the 8bit numbers that become the different variables. Three small PicAxe microcontrollers are used in the Automaphone, one to control the old printer mechanism, scan in data and make the beat sounds, the other two are used to make the lead and bass synth sounds."
The system "was built by Graham Hinton back in the mid 70's ! Its the precursor to his current series of modules. The strange looking co-ax like connectors are nuclear physics spec Lemo connectors which connect to the virtual earth inputs on the Music Lab modules and the Pin Matrix module..."
