So I’ve been working on a passion project for about a year now. The concept revolves around a unique fusion of a diorama and a music box that plays lo-fi music. I was a 90’s kid and had many fond memories of playing the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, N64, etc as well as watching Saturday morning cartoons, reading Goosebumps, and just being enamored with all things related to technology.
My aim with my music boxes is to transport you back to the 80’s, 90’s, and early 2000’s so you can get hit with a wave of nostalgia and reminisce about simpler times while simultaneously sitting back and enjoying the lo-fi melodies. My first music box that I’d like to showcase is set in a kid’s room during the mid 1990s on a Halloween night playing the Sega Saturn after a successful Trick-or-Treating adventure.
There’s a working TV with a small 1-inch screen that shows actual videogame footage, a bedroom window with animating backgrounds, and a desk lamp that can turn on and off with over 2 hours of both licensed and AI generated lo-fi music playing in the background. It took me about 5 months to make the first one and I’m quite proud of it, though subsequent versions take less than half the time to make since I already have a lot of the design and engineering aspect fleshed out and standardized. now it’s just a matter of coming up with different room/space concepts to fill up the music boxes themselves and coming up with different things to display on the TVs, windows, monitors, etc as well as curating and generating new lo-fi music.
Below are more photos showcasing the music box. I did use my Snapmaker’s laser and CNC mode to cut out the bedroom walls, floor, as well as the curtains, bed comforter, pillowcase, floor rug, floor mirror, bulletin board, and window glass (clear acrylic). A few of the bigger bedroom objects were printed on my Snapmaker, though admittedly most of the objects were printed on a resin 3D printer due to the nature of their really small size and being able to squeeze out more detail vs a FDM printer. I’m not sure if I qualify to enter the ongoing Halloween contest currently being conducted by Snapmaker because of that. Anyway, if you like what you see you can head to my profile to find my linktree which will direct you to additional content and info. I literally just started my “content creator journey” yesterday so I would appreciate any follows or subs from my fellow makers and creators.
Thank you! I do have some build process photos and videos, but not a lot for this particular model since I was still figuring things out and wasn’t documenting every step of the way like I did with the unit that came afterwards (different bedroom), but I still have some that I’ll post here.
The TV is using a mini OLED powered by a derivative of an Arduino board. Video files are read off of a micro SD card.
I think the hardest thing about this was to make a good foundation and standard to build on top of so that I don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every music box. All the music boxes are built the same way and have ample internal space to hold various electronics, speakers, raspberry Pis, timer relays, etc, though there are variations of size depending on the diorama part so some music boxes might be 2 to 4 inches wider, but they all are essentially built the same way and look the same so there’s a certain level of consistency. This helps free up my mind to concentrate more on the creative aspect of the music boxes rather than the engineering part. It took me 5 months to build my first one, but later versions take less than half the time.
In fact, if I wanted to replicate one that I already built (like the one above for example) I can probably make it less than two weeks since all the 3D models, vector files and video/music files for each music box are archived. It’s just a matter of cutting, printing, painting and assembling at that point. Coming up with new music boxes set in a different environment with all new models, TV/window footage and music takes around 5 to 7 weeks or so from conception to final product.
Thank you so much! It means a lot to hear that. If you like what you see please subscribe to my Youtube or my Patreon, I would love to be able to make these music boxes full time and dedicate myself to making high quality content for all to see.
Very cool!
