Automagic
© Elisabeth Codoux
This project took place in early 2025 on the occasion of Elisabeth Codoux’ masters exam in Klang und Realität at Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf.
Her idea was to build a series of ‘musical robots’ that are remote-controllable so that an audience could interact with them within a live-performance setting.
Elisabeth asked me to help her realize this idea. She designed and build the hardware part of the robots and their remote controls, while I designed the circuitry, programmed the microcontrollers and advised her in the planning of the hardware.
We ended up building six robots that were equipped with LEDs, aswell as stepper- and vibrationmotors. For each robot we build one remote control that controlled the LED color, LED “candlelight flicker” (pseudo-random brightness modulation) and also the each of the motors speed.
Dennis Scheiba kindly helped us create a custom network protocol for transmitting the remote controls’ data and reviewed my code.
Pics
© Elisabeth Codoux
Closeup of the first prototype.
Perfboard with the ESP32C3 that was controlling one of the robots.
© Elisabeth Codoux
One of the six remote controls