Some kids dream about getting a pony, others dream about a small form factor violin-style MIDI controller. [Brady Y. Lin] was one of the latter, and now, with the skills he’s learning at Northwestern, he can make that dream a reality — and share it with all of us as an open source hardware project.
The dream instrument’s name is Stradex1, and it’s a lovely bit of kit. The “fretless” neck is a SoftPot linear potentiometer being sampled by an ADS1115 ADC — that’s a 16-bit unit, so while one might pedantically argue that there are discreet frets, there’s 2^15 of them, which is functionally the same as none at all. Certainly it’s enough resolution for continuous-sounding pitch control, as well as vibrato, as you can see at 3:20 in the demo video below. The four buttons that correspond to the four strings of a violin aren’t just push-buttons, but also contain force sensors (again, sampled by the 16-bit ADC) to allow for fine volume control of each tone.
A few other potentiometers flesh out the build, allowing control over different MIDI parameters, such as what key [Brady] is playing on. The body is a combination of 3D printed plastic and laser-cut acrylic, but [Brady] suggests you could also print the front and back panels if you don’t happen to have a laser cutter handy.
This project sounds great, and it satisfies the maker’s inner child, so what’s not to love. We’ve had lots of MIDI controllers on Hackaday over the years — everything from stringless guitars to wheel-less Hurdy-Gurdies to say nothing of laser harps galore — but somehow, we’ve never had a MIDI violin. The violin hacks we have featured tend to be either 3D printed or comically small.
If you like this project but don’t feel like fabbing and populating the PCB, [Brady] is going to be giving one away to his 1000th YouTube subscriber. As of this writing, he’s only got 800, so that could be you!
Nice.
A couple years ago I was looking at making something similar but couldn’t find any soft-pots that were long enough, I think the longest I found was 15cm when I wanted closer to 30cm as a violinist.
I am actually in the same boat… been wanting to create a project like this for years, but im aiming for a much longer neck. There is the possibility of designing a capacitive touch sensor, but I dont have any pcb design skills, and my soldering is horrible.
I hope y’all make them! As a kid, I always hated those electronic toys that pretended to be an instrument. I get they were toys now, but I quickly lost interest them as a child due to their simplicity. Open source electronic instruments need to be a thing, if only so more children can learn to break and fix them.
Shannon, SpectraSymbol makes them up to 100cm long.
Not sure whether it was trying to be sly by saying such tiny frets would be discreet, but you probably meant “discrete”.
A fun idea. I need to try some of those long linear pots. I wonder if they’re better than a capsense array.
“Some kids dream about getting a pony”
Courtesy of DIY genetic engineering they just might. :-D
All you need is a cheap adult toy from Aliexpress. Search for “pony play plug”.
Vote Vermin Supreme for president!
I prefer Vendacious of the Tines! (RiP Verner Vinge!)
I love this kind of toys, the fact that we always are experts playing them as soon as we grab them. Taka-taka.taka-taaaahhhh!! annoying everyone in the room. A couple of days ago I was remembering a electronics magazine called “saber electronica” the cover article was about a box with all kind of pots and switches, to play with a bunch of oscilators inside, 555, discrete oscilators, mixers, relaxations and of course, leds, those were the times. Just like the old internet saying: we were happy and we didn’t know it.
A good project but the digital editing and it’s effect on human delivery is null. I’d like to hear 5 to 10 seconds of actual demo-performance. The soft pots interest me but compared to more than 2 feet of self sustaining slide steel I’d expect less pitch control.
So you’re saying you would rather have a completely different but similar thing in a real instrument.
This is fine, the information is there, go nuts.