The making of the Magic Xylophone

It was required to build a radio controlled children xylophone for the opera The Magic Flute. As a member of the props team it was decided that i would be the person to attempt such a task, I had never built anything of such complexity before, however having worked with basic electronics before i had a small understanding of what was required.

[Image:http://www.flickr.com/photos/24731706@N03/7164612695/in/photostream/lightbox/]

I am now going to explain how the magic was performed.

When i started the project, i needed to understand exactly what it was going to do, how large it was going to be and what i was going to use to power it. With the xylophone being only 300mm in length, the space inside the prop was very limited, this however limited my choices of: A, Motor capacity B, Power supply C Lighting capacity.