Design West: Intel’s music of the spheres

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Design West is underway this week at the San Jose Convention Center. There are plenty of people in attendance, both in the sessions and in the Exhibit Hall, particularly at the Intel booth.

Intel’s a popular destination at the show, because they’ve got on display there a very interesting thing.

First shown at last fall’s Intel Developers Conference, it’s a musical ensemble that plays when a swarm of several thousand 1″ pellets fly up and out of various hoppers and dispensers and land on the music-making parts of the Rube-Goldberg-like contraption.

The resulting 3-minute concert is captivating from a musical point of view, and fascinating from an engineering point of view. You can see several clips of the performance below.

This is how Intel’s Drew Pool describes it, “Dubbed the Intel Industrial Control in Concert, this machine-to-machine-controlled collection of digitally connected vibraphones, xylophones, high-hats and other sound-making devices is intended to demonstrate the simplicity of building a state-of-the-art smart system using off-the-shelf technologies based on common x86 chip architecture.”

The reason Intel’s going around showing off this thing – which is the size of a small truck – is because it was constructed in less than 90 days and only cost $160,000. Good news, if you watch the video below, have some extra cash and time on hand, and are inspired to follow suit.

Tags: Design West, Intel, Intel Industrial Control in Concert, Robotic musicians, Rube Goldberg

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