This fabulous musical instrument was created by members of the Perth, Australia hackerspace Artifactory. It will be having its first public concert in about two weeks, and the final configuration will have 13 coils in 2 tiers. (The photo shows a partially competed build.)
Bicycle spokes are proving to be a fun choice for the antennae, giving an orange tint to the plasma. The software has been upgraded to allow pitch bend, MIDI CC control of vibrato and PWM duty cycle – higher pitched tones require greater power to recharge the capacitors between sparks. This has given the Arcophone another octave of range, and in the upper registers, the plasma appears to human eye as a continuous stream of flaming gas rather than individual sparks.
Also, it appears that the guys will be offering a musical coil driver kit at some point. Cool!
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