DeepNote Guitar Hero Bot


A team of five high school seniors have released some videos of their new Guitar Hero bot named DeepNote. This bot uses a group of custom photodiode modules with an 8 nanosecond latency placed on the screen to sense the notes. The Parallax Propeller system takes this input and controls solid state relays hooked into the guitar’s circuitry. After we looked at a few videos of the early prototype system, we could really see how it has evolved. They have custom PCBs and a really nice frame for the photodiode sensors. You can find more info on their How It Works page and view a demo video embedded below.

Related: AutoGuitarHero and Slashbot

[via Engadget]

18 thoughts on “DeepNote Guitar Hero Bot

  1. Congradulations on setting up 5 optical sensors in front of a tv and having it output to a USB port.

    How about you use this to build a robot that plays the drums in Rockband, and it better look like the bear in the Chuck-E-Cheese robot band.

  2. That is so cool :) I cant get enough of all the G.H bots out there.

    My aproach would however be to mechanically enhance the respons time of my left hand digits, and put some accelerators in my spine so i would hit the notes on time….

  3. It is yet another simple feedback loop from a set of optical sensors that tell the system what it just did. Why is this news?
    It is a novel application I’ll grant you that, but the part about everyone doing this exact same thing trying to develop the sensors and boards from scratch is simply re-inventing the wheel unnecessarily, only badly. Especially since you can already buy this stuff off the shelf, plug and play, for literally a couple of bucks a sensor, from any industrial motion control supply catalog. Even a simple computer-run lathe or pick-and-place device has both more accurate and a greater variety and number of optical feedback sensors than this, as does virtually every piece of computer controlled assembly equipment going back decades.

  4. Eric,

    “since you can already buy this stuff off the shelf, plug and play, for literally a couple of bucks a sensor, from any industrial motion control supply catalog”

    Sensors are all good and fine, but what will you do with it? What kind are you talking about? (Link, please)

    “Even a simple computer-run lathe or pick-and-place device has both more accurate and a greater variety and number of optical feedback sensors than this”

    Since everyone has a computer run lathe lying around to hack into my guitar…

    Keep the articles coming. I will be happy once they publish the schematics. That way I won’t have to re-invent the wheel on the sensors.

    Although, I do wonder why they are using an 8-core, 80MHz processor. Are they doing DSP on this? I wonder why they didn’t just run it directly to the SSR.

  5. When did all these whiners start reading hackaday? if it’s not all hacks all the time, people whine. when they do post hacks, people whine that they’re too obvious. and now I’m whining about people whining. -_-;

  6. man, if it isn’t some guy whining about whining whiners, it’s some other guy whining about that first guy’s whining and the whiners HE’S whining about.

    …a loaf of bread, a jug of whine, and…hackaday…

  7. @7: Reinventing the wheel isn’t always useless. It can be a great educational experience — remember, these are high school kids. Coming up with new stuff can come later once they have the basics down. This is the electronics equivalent of practicing times tables or deriving Newton’s theorums. It’s nothing new but it practices important skills.

  8. That is seriously cool. I studied electronics at college and this is not an easy setup to build. I am very impressed it has been achieved by a group of high school students. Obviously, there could have been improvements especially on the number of optical feedback sensors but well done anyway.

    tanzanite

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