Do you remember having a xylophone as a child? It was originally made with wooden bars, each tuned to a specific pitch of the musical scale and struck with a rubber or wooden miniature mallet.

Fast forward 50 years, take away the wooden bars and mallet and replace them with a stylus (roach clip), a keyboard and build it around the open-source electronics prototyping platform Arduino and you have the coolest DIY miniature futuristic xylophone.

The Nebulophone, by Bleep Labs, does require some electronics know-how since you have to build it yourself, like soldering and stripping wires and what-not, but once done, you have all sorts of fun buttons and dials to alter the waveform; adjust decay, pitches, keyboard mapping, and sequential chords.

It also has “adjustable waveforms, a light controlled analog filter, LFO and an arpeggiator that can be clocked over IR.”

The only things you have to provide are a 9-volt battery, a speaker, some assembly skills and an ear for music. $54.99 from ThinkGeek.