Guitar Hero Actuator


Another day, another EE that refuses to play Guitar Hero properly. [Julian Bleecker] went into the design of this Guitar Hero actuator not really knowing how to size solenoids properly. Luckily, trial and error can get you a long way. The first solenoids he purchased couldn’t apply enough force. The second was overkill. It was certainly strong enough but too heavy and too large to mount to the neck. The final set ended up being both the right size and working well even at 12V, half the design voltage. The elegant mounting system is what really makes this project shine. [Julian] provides the schematic for the ATmega168 driver board, which is an Arduino stripped of the extraneous bits.

Related: Slashbot and AutoGuitarHero

[via Make]

5 thoughts on “Guitar Hero Actuator

  1. Maybe, instead of human v machines, the contest will be how quickly a human can assemble a machine to play Guitar Hero (and how accurately it plays).

    In fact, to allow people from all over to compete, maybe someone could write an electronics simulator (like Eagle or somthing), so the competition is about design, as opposed to the quickness of assembly.

    Of course, there would be some people who would cheat, by creating a piece of software or hardware to play the game for them.

  2. Looks like he went all out with the fancy gold solenoids.

    kevin, I agree, I’ve been complaining about it for a while. Usually MAKE is worse, as they are clearly trying to pimp out their store items.

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