At SynthGear, we have a bit of a thing for music-playing robots, and this latest robot that we’ve discovered is pure awesomeness: it’s purpose-made to play the theremin.

Ranjit Bhatnagar, one of our favorite DIY musical-instrument crazy inventors, developed “LEV” as an art-meets-music-meets robotics project.

Ranjit says:

Lev is named after Lev Termen (Leon Theremin), a Russian scientist who invented one of the first electronic musical instruments, an instrument which is played without touching, and which bears his name.

Lev is made out of an old floor lamp, some plumbing supplies, a few empty mint tins, and some microprocessors. Lev will never replace the human theremin virtuoso, although, as there are so few of the latter, a mechanical substitute may someday be vital to our economy.

LEV definitely isn’t really proficient (or even really good) at playing the theremin, but it definitely ranks up there in spectacular geek factor.

Check out the video below, with LEV playing “Crazy” by Patsy Cline:

• Guitar playing robot made from inkjet printers
• Theremin-playing cat
• Jellyfish Theremin
• DIY IKEA lamp theremin