Gutarist, hacker, and mustache enthusiast [David Neevel] brought together way too many pieces of hardware in order to use his electric guitar as a computer keyboard.
So let’s dig into the house of cards he built for the project. It starts off with the guitar which has been fitted with an additional pickup to interface with a Roland GR-33 synthesizer pedal. That outputs a MIDI signal, which many hackers would have connected to the computer and parsed with a simple script. But not [David], he connected it to an Arduino via an optisolator. Well that’s not too ridiculous, right? Don’t you think he’ll just parse the MIDI signals and push them to the computer via the Arduino’s USB port? Wrong! He translates the MIDI signals into combinations for a big relay board which is emulating the key matrix of an old USB keyboard. But as you can see in the demo video after the jump it works quite well.
If you’re more of the drumming sort there’s an electric drum set version of this hack too.
[Thanks Dale]
Brilliant! I wonder if there’s a word or a sentence that’s actually also melodic.
That’s a sweet craigslist Flying V.
guitarist*
Finally, a Digital Instrument Musical Interface, or as I like to say: “DIMI”.
Didn’t like that? How about, “He puts the ‘GUI’ in ‘guitar’?” Actually, it’s more ‘tactile’ or ‘audible,’ but that just isn’t as cute.
Did David build (or at least layout) that relay board himself? Nice.
Next step: replace common words with chords. ;)
You forgot “Power Chord-ed Keyboard”
David, if you’re interested in a collaborative piece with the drum keyboard, drop me a line. It would be trivial to add a piano as well. The only question is — what to type?
Play the lyrics from a cappella songs.
Epic reply :D
Unexpected, impressive, overly complex/engineered, the perfect hackaday post :)
Someone show this man the arduino leonardo, may save him a few bucks on the relays and custom board (but probably not as much fun).
David does simple too….
The real question is can you play guitar hero with it?
MIDI => USB, MIDI => Arduino => VUSB, etc… So many easier options.
Nice build, that relay board look home made. I really would like to know why he choose these options.
Nice work and it works, can’t say that of most electronics projects…
Cause relays are bad ass!
There was too much mustache for an Arduino. Only relays could handle that much power
Epic mustache.
Wow that impressively complicated and awesome!!!!!! I wonder what the delay is for that MIDI generator, I didn’t hear any.
He’s rocking that ultra-stache
Wow thats a lot of energy wasted on something so entirely useless…
I LOVE IT.
I’d love to hear how it sounds after he’s practised a bit on it.
This project is OK but I like the Rube Goldberg sort of creation that David made
http://youtu.be/pii4G8FkCA4
Ok, someone have to say it.
Earl Hickey, is that you??
I like that he included backspace/delete keys.
@static OMG THAT should have been his hackaday claim to fame. I personally LOVE the cream filling, but hey, anyone who can first turn out an awesome robot to get rid of it, then make arguably the funniest robot demo videos I have ever seen, deserves clean cookies.
So, who guessed it right first time?? Haha chairoscuro!! How were we ever meant to get that?! Love this! Shithead! :)
Am I the only one who thought of this?
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2LJ1i7222c&w=420&h=315%5D
EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2LJ1i7222c
This made me smile :)
It’s good that it made you smile; I see it as the polar opposite of this project.
Nice tech chops, but it’s so useless you’d think it was Steampunk.
I’m guessing the result of going the other way round: using the same method to “make a song” out of a text.
this is one of the most creative things i’ve seen in a while with the arduino. fantastic project!
Reblogged this on Julio Della Flora.
I cannot decide if this “keyboard alternative” is awesome or overkill. I think I would just play a random song to see what it says afterwards.