GuitArduino

CHECK OUT THE OTHER BLOG!

2011-12-26T22:51:00.001-08:00

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

2011-04-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-19T22:26:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-16T18:43:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-14T15:08:00.000-07:00

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)

2011-04-05T22:08:00.001-07:00

April 5, 2011 Update 1 of 2 (pictures)

2011-04-05T16:54:00.000-07:00

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.

March 24 Update

2011-03-24T18:43:00.000-07:00

A lot has been updated since last time. Have some chords programmed in and will be expanding too. As well as the ability of adding a capo to your playing. The fretboard has been mounted to the neck of the guitar with hinges and locks. Just check out the video, it covers it all.

On a side note I have been purposely not filming the build process like I was doing previously. There was just too many hours poured into video editing. It was a great way to document my work, but too tedious.

March 15 Update

2011-03-15T17:17:00.000-07:00

Listen closely to my whistley nose!

LCD and Serial Communication

2011-03-13T12:47:00.000-07:00

I have programmed all basic minor and major chords into the Arduino. My next is goal is to be able to select which chord you would like to play. This will be down with some push buttons and an LCD. The LCD Library that the Arduino uses is great, but it is use a lot of of the arduino's pins. With a shift register we can go from using 6 pins to 3. Anyways, I just wanted to share this Arduino Library I found and plan on using in my code. It writes to an LCD with a 595 chip (serial in parallel out). He does a great job documenting his work so it is really easy to follow. Controlling and LCD with a Shift Register.

2011-03-12T17:55:00.000-08:00

Here is the permanent circuit made for the LED matrix. There is also a plugin made to go into the arduino. Just trying to keep things organized which is always a good and smart way to build.

Plans

2011-03-11T10:38:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I took the circuit for the LEDs, from the bread board, to a more permanent and hopefully final hard circuit. Since this portion is finalized I want to start coding in chords and scales. There are 2 ways I want to implement this: 1 - There will be buttons and and LCD screen which you can scroll through to chose the chords; 2 - While the guitar is plugged into the computer, run a program that can control what LED's are lit (this will be done with Processing). Those are plans for this weekend. I will upload pics of the hard circuit later this evening.

I am becoming concerned with space in the neck of the guitar. At this point I don't think I can make a Guitorgan AND have LED's in the fretboard. Since time is an issue (only a month left), a guitorgan might not make this round of the GuitArduino. However, just because this project is for my senior design, I am not going to ditch this project once it is all done. A Guitorgan like instrument will be later in the future, if it doesn't make this round it will make the next one. The determining factor will also be when the neck of the guitar is milled. I won't know how much room I will have to work with until then. Milling the guitar neck will probably take place during my spring break (in 2 weeks).

Lastly when placing the fretboard back onto the neck, gluing it back on probably won't be an option. If anything were to malfunction on the LED matrix, it would just be disastrous to have to separate the fretboard from the neck if it were glued. I would like to try and make it so the fretboard is mounted to neck with hinges, just like a small box/chest. The only trade off would be that the hinges and locks would get in the way of your playing, but hopefully I can find a small enough hinge and lock so that won't be an issue.

Update March 8, 2011

2011-03-08T16:56:00.000-08:00

Here is the LED matrix of the fretboard of the GuitArduino going through some sample code.

Update March 5, 2011

2011-03-05T09:35:00.000-08:00

Assembly Day 2

2011-02-28T20:00:00.000-08:00

Just continuing where we left off before.

The Assembly

2011-02-23T05:25:00.000-08:00

Here are the videos of my day spent assembling a portion of the GuitArduino. Sorry for the abrupt endings, needed to get some sleep.

Build Day 1 - Overview

2011-02-22T19:54:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted anything in a while but today was a big day. I have been working and filming this project since 11 a.m. today, but I don't think I will have video of this for a while. The video shows the entire process of me building up to this part of the GuitArduino (separating the neck from fret board, removing frets, drilling holes, putting in LEDs, all that fun stuff). The video below is just a preview of what I have completed.

How to make a simple electric guitar

2011-02-18T07:19:00.000-08:00

I found this really cool instructable on making a cheap and dirty electric guitar. Since we are going to be making our own guitar pickups, I find it pretty neat and definitely want to build one in the future. Check it out.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-simple-electric-guitar/

The Guitorgan

2011-02-13T17:56:00.000-08:00

Found a site with some good pictures of a guitorgan and it's inner circuitry. (Look at the picture of how the frets are sectioned into 6 pieces.)
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=445142

Since a resistor network will never work I think separating the neck the neck has started to become more of an option. Over the next two weeks I would like to clean up the guitar in its current state before tackling that project.

In the meantime my senior design partner is going to be experimenting with making his own guitar pick ups and try to recreate something like a roland gk-3. I look forward to future posts on that topic.

Proto Demo

2011-02-11T17:41:00.000-08:00

CLICK THE WATCH ON YOUTUBE BUTTON IF YOU GET "VIDEO IS UNAVAILABLE"

Trying to hook you in with keyboard cat! So far this is what I have done, but I still have a long way to go. The code is still sloppy so their is still some improving. It still does not have to capability to hold down notes that are frets next to each other. I can hold down power chords or just singular notes, as I do in the video. I posted the current code in the comments section if anyone is interested.

Coding...

2011-02-10T11:32:00.000-08:00

Hey just to keep updated, I am currently working on the code for the guitar. It is not very long code just polishing it up and working out a bug or two. Hopefully I have the code and a video up by today or tomorrow night.

MIDI Break Out Board

2011-02-07T23:09:00.000-08:00

Just received the MIDI Breakout Board via Sparkfun. Soldered it up and uploaded some sample code via Arduino Tutorial and it works great. The Arduino is controlling to sound output by the synth. Now I have just been messing with the code and various MIDI output in order to output chords and such. Together the m-Audio Uno , and MIDI-OX (freeware), have been great for debugging the output of the MIDI Breakout Board or the synth. I think the next step is to work on the monophonic MIDI guitar...

Rev 1 - Behind the Scenes and Why It Doesn't Work

2011-02-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

The "schematic" above depicts the initial strategy of how the guitar is currently setup for testing. When a string is pressed, shorting the string and frets, it creates a voltage divider, allowing us to take in the information via Arduino.

[****DENOMINATOR = Rin + R1||R2]

I went through one-by-one and tested each string and fret and was getting appropriate analog readings with the Arduino, but that didn't last long. It wasn't until I tried to test for holding down multiple frets that I noticed the flaw in the design.

[****DENOMINATOR = Rin + R1||R2||R3]

Notice how the two strings being held down (X). When the E string is being pressed against the fret, the fret becomes conductive, allowing the B string to become conducting and allowing R3 to become apart of the circuit. This is not what I wanted.

I thought I had a fix for this but at the moment it does not seem so. I do have a potential fix but it would involve ripping apart the neck of the guitar and I would like to spend a few days with a setup similar and less evasive before I try and do so.

What we have now is the ability to read a chord that does not have a note on a fret immediately next to it (power chord), or to read a single note. Today I am suppose to receive the MIDI break out board and will try to program the GuitArduino to take one input at a time. It is not what I want the final outcome to be but it will be good practice in the programming side and the final strategies may be the same. I will post video if I get it running accordingly. The first MOOG synthesizers were polyphonic...

Testing

2011-02-05T22:29:00.000-08:00

Well it seems I have hit a speed bump today using this method. ~~It is OK however because I have developed another method using resistors that I will go into more detail about soon.~~ Let me just post some pictures of what I have been up to.

I will post a more in depth explanation as to this setup soon. While testing out the strings with the Arduino, I discovered that I was unable to hold down more than one note at once. If I held down a chord my resistance readings would go haywire. I do not want to design a monophonic instrument.

The Beginning

2011-02-04T21:51:00.000-08:00

The time has finally come to begin designing the interface. This last implementation is a stretch from the original thought of design which entailed separating the neck of the guitar (Not fun and A LOT of wiring). The goal is to find out where your finger is on the frets and strings. The strategy for finding out where you finger is is a simple voltage division. According to where you finger is placed on the string, you will get a different resistance reading via different resistors tied with to the guitars frets. So the guitar string is like a long wire in and input resistance and the frets all have a different resistance value coming off of them. For you EE's it is simply two resistances in parallel. Anyways this resistance measure will talk to the Arduino via analog input and from there we can determine which string is being pressed. Pretty much this sample project, just interfaced differently

I began prepping the guitar by tinning the frets. Be careful if you do this, your top could by laminate and burn your guitar. Anyways don't hold down the soldering iron for too long.

Then came soldering on the resistors the neck.

The here is is all finalized. Next step coding and checking....

What is GuitArduino?

2011-02-04T21:39:00.000-08:00

GuitArduino is going to be an open source project for turning your guitar into a MIDI machine like a synth. Now there are devices that already do so such as a Roland GK3, but these devices are a bit expensive. The goal is develop a MIDI output guitar that can be done in under $30. What can you do with a MIDI guitar? Just go to YouTube and check out some videos.

Hopefully I don't hit to many speed bumps on the way and if any one has some suggestions, advice or question, feel free to contact me. Thanks.