Painted first versions, pictured here on the stairs up to my study at home in South Woodford. I built three units, and most of the components (Raspberry Pi, HifiBerry, speakers) were new. The batteries are old pairs of 6V lead-acid types I had left over from my shed, though I had originally bought larger batteries for two of them. My original aim was to build several, perhaps as many as ten, and put them in various positions around a large performance room. In the end I never took these out of the house, and made only one video of them, in which I introduced them. Soon afterwards I stripped them of their components for re-use in other units. I still have two of the three frames.

The first floating version, built around a wooden frame comprising two corner sides of a cube. I built only one of these, a fourth unit following the three white standing versions, this one with a new smaller lead acid battery. It had an onboard camera and microphone recorder, plus a pump below the water level to provide rotation. I barely had time to test it before taking it down to a flooded subway at the bottom of my road. It didn't work very well. The pump blocked up after a minute or so, the sound was very quiet, and it did not record its own audio. But to the extent that you could hear it, it sounded and looked very promising.

Having built these especially to go in a foot tunnel under the Central Line in Snaresbrook, I tried them out at a couple of other locations first, starting with a tunnel under the A406 in Walthamstow Forest, pictured here. I took the standing frames apart in order to build these, using new smaller lead acid batteries of the same kind as the floating unit. I had grand plans to make them remote-controllable, but gave up after failing to get them to connect to a WiFi hub reliably, and make them work on a timer basis instead, giving me five minutes to get cameras in position and get some initial shots, and then five minutes of sound. I built in a feature so that once I had got them home again, I could compile a recording of the sound they had played.

To date they are the last time I have videoed three of a version. I painted them in striking fluorescent colours to make them stand out in a video, and add an electret microphone to each for recording the ambient sound. With no noisy rotation on the devices, they did a reasonable job, and the ambient recordings from Aldersbrook and Snaresbrook were excellent. Strapped onto hand railings in this picture, they were clearly visible both from the footway and on video, whereas in the location for which they were intended, and where they sounded best, they were too inconspicuous for my liking. After Snaresbook, I left them alone for months, then eventually took them to bits and re-used all the components. I still have the original frames.

When I finally did take the A-frames to bits, it was to build these. I had always wanted rotating Randomatones, but had only briefly managed it with the first floating version. On a bike ride into town one autumn morning I discovered a suitable spot for a shoot, under a railway bridge in Walthamstow Marshes, and built these spinning units especially for it, even down to the shackle bolt fixings at the top of the low-RPM motor spindles, for clamping to structural beams under the bridge. Having made a shoot the previous year in Aldersbrook by biking there from my house with two of the A-frames, I made only two of these, so that I could get them both in my rucksack and bike to various locations within reach of home. I ended up making six videos with these units, including this fantastic shoot in the Woolwich Foot Tunnel.

Although the spinning units were small and easily portable, I was starting to venture into places where they were too small for the space. I began building two larger ones, on basically the same principle, but with a larger cone speaker and a much larger horn speaker, making new orange and pink frames. I finished this orange-framed one first, and took it on a shoot outside Southampton with the smaller blue version, having to carry it in its own bag as it was so much larger. By that point, having made a few good waterside shoots, I was becoming impatient to build some proper floating versions. I never completed the second large pink spinning unit, but left this orange unit assembled while I cannibalised the two smaller ones for new floating versions. I still have the orange casing with the speaker, motor and battery attached.

In a radical change of approach, I fitted the standard Randomatone components, with larger horns, to two new structures that sat on inflatable swim rings. Each had a propellor underneath to make it rotate, and the blue "pilot" unit had an additional propellor that could turn on a vertical servo-driven post to provide some steerable movement. The propellor and battery were on a separate detachable section that slid on and off, with connection to the main body via RS232 serial plugs. To make these usable in a shoot, I had to get the wifi remote control properly working, for both the sound and the propellor control, and discovered that one of my action cameras served as a decent Wifi hub that the units seemed to connect to reliably. I tried them out at this location under the Kingsland Bridge at Limehouse lock. There was a good breeze, the steering propellor was completely under-powered and for a moment I thought I would lose them in the weeds on the opposite inaccessible side of the canal. Somehow I got them back, ending a very short shoot, and replaced the steering mechanism in time for their next shoot under the former Birlec factory in Birmingham.

Mindful that the original Randomatones were three in number, I built a third floating unit in the new design, painted fluorescent pink to go with the blue and orange units. I had intended, and might still one day, to take all three on a shoot, but I have yet to do so. Instead I have mostly paired the blue pilot unit with this new pink device, in a total of 13 videos to date. Their features barely changed over that time, besides the addition of a clear plastic cover over the electronics to protect from tunnel roof leaks. I started with an underwater camera on the battery block. The first time I used it, the water was too murky for any of the footage to be usable. I didn't bother with in on the second shoot, but left the attachment on. The attachment (a small metal bracket) was still on for the third shoot, and it tore the float as I was pulling the whole thing out of the water. I've still never managed to get any underwater footage, despite having had a couple of perfect opportunities in Sapperton and Cwmbran.

After many location shoots in deserted tunnels or other generally obscure places, I felt it was time to bring the Randomatones to an audience, and revisit an initial idea of exhibiting them somehow. I had an offer to use them as part of a show in nearby Highams Park, and within a few days had a separate offer for an experimental music evening in Cambridge with my old Improvizone friends, and used these as a driver to build new standing units. I wanted the rotation capability still, so I put together a couple of turntable-like setups using some lazy-suzan bearing joints and the low RPM motors reclaimed from the original spinning units. The bearing joints are noisy and unreliable, either coming loose or seizing entirely, but essentially work.

I was in the middle of building new smaller floating units, with different speaker setups, comprising pairs of the small horns I used for the original spinning units, plus some new waterproof cone speakers purchased especially after my experiences in canal tunnels. I added some bright new LEDs (immediately blowing a couple after wiring them incorrectly) and some opaque cylinders intended to bring some directionality to the cone speakers, but that actually make very good lampshade-like baffles for the LEDs.

Two new floating units, seen here on their first video shoot in the middle of the night in Chesterfield. These are smaller and lighter than the previous floating ones. They use lithium-ion batteries instead of the heavier lead-acid types. The battery and propellor are both attached, meaning it's straight out of the carrying container and into the water. Both have only one propellor, so they are not steerable, unlike the previous kind, where one was a "pilot" device with an extra propellor. I don't plan to upgrade either one of these. In fact I'm more likely to remove the propellors completely.

Even with propellors, I can fit them both in my cajon bag, and I can carry the bag on my back. I've yet to cycle to a video shoot with these, as there is always other gear to carry for a floating shoot, but I'm hoping they will be portable enough for me to try out some more floating locations in London.