CHECK OUT THE OTHER BLOG!

Hey all,

    I no longer update this blog and encourage you to check out my other blog. I also just released a podcast that and want all the feedback I can get, check it out: http://twoguysonebit.blogspot.com/2011/12/podcast-e001-rgb-leds-and-pwm.html. Thanks.

-Andrew Garza

GuitArduino Recap and Future

Well UIC's Senior Design Expo was yesterday and the feedback on the GuitArduino went great. To summarize we won the "Arlene Norsym Award" which basically means, "most popular design" or "most voted by other expo contestants" or as like to call it, "The People's Choice Award". Anyways, I am very happy that people recognized the hard work that I poured into this project.

Since I am done with part of the project, here is a link to the documentation of the project. Here you will find information, design goals, schematics, flow charts, user manual and even code.

GuitArduino Google Doc

I do not plan on posting to this blog for a while. School is coming to a close and I am going to take a short break, maybe even begin working on some other projects. Those will be posted on my other blog.

Two Guys One Bit

I will pick up, hopefully in a few months, to create a Guitar-MIDI controller, as I had originally planned. Probably throw on some LEDs on their just to grab people's attention :)

Poster

We have to have a poster for senior design expo. This is what I created for it. Yes I copied the look and feel of MAKE magazine.

GuitArduino Final Senior Design Project

Hello everyone, this is my senior design project for my final year at UIC. Enjoy!

On a side note: This guitar has no MIDI features (as was originally planned). It is solely a guitar that show you how to play chords and scales with an LED matrix in the fretboard of the guitar. However, I will stick to my word a develop a MIDI controlled guitar in the near future.

Programming Continues

Just to keep updated, the GuitArduino is close to "completion". The only thing left to do is add all the guitar chords and scales. I spent the past 3 hours trying to improve my algorithm for loading scales, but I am discovering that the Arduino's clock rate isn't fast enough for it. I am trying to avoid having REALLY BIG ARRAYS but that might be unavoidable if I want the lights to appear non-flashing. The goal is to have this finished by the end of the weekend.

April 5, 2011 Update 2 of 2 (video)

April 5, 2011 Update 1 of 2 (pictures)

It has been a busy 24 hours. Some of these photos are older but the majority are from today and last night...

Thought I would have a little fun before I totally milled it out. 

Those are the shift registers and decade counter underneath the mess of wires in the image below. For the LED matrix in the neck of the guitar.

The box's main purpose is to him this mess of wire. Would have been a headache/torture if I had to cut a resolder them. It also creates an area where the thins wires aren't under stress.

Mounted the Arduino to the guitar so it is stable while prototyping continues.

Image of the box that hides the wire. It is held onto the body of the guitar with velcro.

Using electrical tape to "hide" the wire and mainly to relieve the wire of any stress.

Made a shield for the LED Matrix to plug nicely into the Arduino. Also, made it so I could access the pins for future prototyping if I needed to.

Made a LCD and input shield as well.

Here is what it looks like finished from the front. The Arduino and input panel is out of the way so it won't interfere with the user.