Holiday Chimes

This project is a battery powered musical chime set, loosely inspired by the Ye Merry Minstrel Caroling Christmas Bells we had as kids. Built with a black walnut stand using copper tubing, 3d-printed hangers and controlled by an ESP32 running MicroPython.

Watch it playing "Silent Night"

Click here or the image below.

I chose to implement these 12 notes (which cover a decent number of songs), but it can be extended as needed (up to the free GPIO pins):

• C5, D, E, F, F#, G, A, B, C6, D, E, F

I mapped C5 (and like) to C4 in software since an actual C4 chime didn't really sound like C4 due to secondary frequencies. This guide was very useful to understand what's going on.

Build

This took me somewhere between 40-80 hours to design, code and build, starting with a "mandatory fun day" event at work.

Get some wood. This is some black walnut I slabbed a year or two ago:

Make sure it's big enough to fit everything:

Cut and plane and do all the normal stuff to make it look pretty:

Cut 12 copper tubes to length. I found an excellent guide at http://leehite.org/Chimes.htm. I bought two 10' sections of type M 1/2" copper pipe and cut them accorting to this guide.

Drill and chamfer holes to hang them by at the hang points.

Make the stand as you please. I chose some pretty simple feet and through tenons.

Make some electromagnets using 1.25" pieces of 3/8 in. Plain Steel Round Rod. 3D print end caps.

Use a helper if available!

Make some recesses in the underside of your wood for 12 hanger modules:

3D print hangers and assemble:

Dead bug solder up each electromagnet.

Space is tight, I used more of the magnet wire for signaling.

Stainless screws for the capacitive buttons. (Line them up better than I did!)

Use a nice power button:

Batteries...

Assemble:

OLED screen and holder:

Finish with Danish Oil.

Software

The software uses regular MIDI files I whittled down in LMMS to simple melodies. I used a version of Mido I stripped down for memory reasons. The ESP-32 runs MicroPython.

The main code is in main.py. It's MVP (but not much more).

Parts

Tools I Used

Use what you have around, this is just what I used.