Building a Replica Outer Wilds Instrument Prop
Acoustic Anomalies managed to build a functional replica of an Outer Wilds instrument that plays itself.
Outer Wilds was one of the best video games of 2019. It let players explore an entire solar system of miniature planets, with a time loop mechanic that added pressure to solve an interplanetary mystery. But if you slowed down enough to take in the atmosphere, you would have seen many small worldbuilding details. One of those was a unique instrument that looked like a cross between a guitar, a hurdy-gurdy, violin, and a music box. In a remarkable feat of artisanal engineering, Acoustic Anomalies managed to build a functional replica of that Outer Wilds instrument.
The only information we have about the in-game instrument is what we see and hear while playing. It seems to have two mechanisms that produce notes. The first is a spinning drum with protruding pins that strike brass bars, kind of like a music box. The other is like a single string of a violin, played with a bow.
Acoustic Anomalies originally intended to make the replica manually playable and to give it the ability to play itself. But he scratched that first goal, so the final instrument works more like a player piano than something like a violin. One stepper motor turns the brass drum at a specific speed, while a second stepper motor moves a nut along the fret board to change the effective length of the string and therefore the note it produces.
A Teensy development board controls those stepper motors and uses sensors to monitor their positions and rotation speeds. Acoustic Anomalies programmed it within the Arduino IDE and it accepts an array of notes that will play in sequence. The brass drum has fixed pins so the order of notes can't change — only the speed. But the fret nut can slide up and down the fret board to play notes in any order. That doesn't, however, produce any notes on its own. A person would have to move a bow across the string to do that.
But perhaps the most impressive part of this project is the craftsmanship. Acoustic Anomalies used a CNC mill and CNC mill to fabricate most of the parts, both wood and brass. With some sanding and staining, the result is fantastic and really does look like an actual instrument that you might find in a music store.
