Yes, fed-up waking to the mono-tone buzz or the ring-ting-a-ring-ting of an alarm clock? Wake up to the sound of the practice chanter and enjoy reveille with a 3D printed piper.  How long will it be until it can play Johnny Cope? Developed by Xenon John – he made a robotised ‘piper’ using a 3D printer, Arduino and practice chanter.  Want to make your own – you can find the instructions here: how to make a 3D printed piper.

Previously a robot has played full-scale bagpipes. When Neil Traser from Robotics Dept. of Carnegie Mellon University, USA, developed “McBlare” project. It plays an ordinary set of bagpipes using an air compressor to provide air and electro-magnetic devices to power the “fingers” that open and close tone holes that determine the musical pitch. McBlare is controlled by a computer that has many bagpipe tunes in its memory. Here it is playing Chris Armstrong’s amazing difficult pipe tune, ‘Xtreme’.

Where is this all going to end? How long before 3D pipers to start competing or forming a band!