I asked AI to draw a circus wagon that could house a street organ.

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Circus wagon design

I asked Coppy to design a street organ.  I gave some descriptions and ideas and AI came up with this.

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Coppy street organ interpretation

I've been consulting Copilot ("Coppy") for input into various projects, and I wanted to share some of the creative visions my artificial friend created for an organ design.

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Escher designed a wagon frame

This is an early iteration of my street organ! At this point it's playable and it includes the rebuilt Thomas orchestra bells as a glockenspiel, the kid-sized bass drum, candy-can snare drum, rohr schalmei pipes as the octave pipes, and an unfinished case.

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David's first Topsy 3

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Topsy street organ

This is one of the early mock-ups -- I have a rudimentary windchest mounted in a frame with the double-action bellows, reservoir, spring, and air distribution.

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Bellows, battery, and wind pressure measuring device

Making pipes was a learning experience for me -- settling on materials and construction methods, etc.  I learned to just do it carefully according to instructions before experimenting with the design and construction.   The folks who have made pipes historically, including John Smith, do things for reasons.  They've gone through the trial and error so I might as well learn from them.  In addition, it's really important to be careful and neat.  Angles, dimensions, and joints all matter so slow down for precision.  Here's some examples of pipes I made that didn't work right.

Here's Copilot imagining how Topsy looks.

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Another street organ interpretation

These are the dimensions of Topsy's case.

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Topsy box

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Topsy street organ

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Side drawing of Topsy

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Topsy front

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Topsy top view

Sometimes you have to rebuild wind chests!  The one on the right is the original.  You can see where some plywood chipped away making a full seat of the pallet valve impossible.  On the left you can see the rebuilt chest all populated with pallet magnets.

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Bad toe holes

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Topsy street organ

Here's a close-up.