Audible Tuner For The Blind

June 27, 2010 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

[Lain Sharp] modified this guitar tuner so it can be used by his blind friend. In the picture above you can make out a small white project box that houses the additional electronics. Inside is another battery and an ATmega168 providing a connection for an earphone. The AVR chip connects to each LED on the tuner and converts the visual tuning meter to an audio cue. Check out the demonstration clip after the break to see how it works.

Now if we could just figure out how to get our strings in tune with our built-in keyboard.

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Radio-Walkman-megaphone Hybrid

June 14, 2010 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

[Erich] rethought the use of a megaphone and ended up with this Mega-Tape-O-Phone. His first move was to ditch the megaphone’s amplifying circuitry in order to add his own based on an LM386 chip. From there a radio receiver joined the party followed by the guts of a tape player. He relocated the head of the tape deck to the end of a flexible cable and coated the outside of the megaphone bell with magnetic tape. Now he’s surfing the airwaves and scratching away happily.

The use of the tape head has been seen here before, but it was never in a mobile package like this is. Join us after the break for some video of this in action.

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Stomp Box Synthesizer

June 1, 2010 by Mike Szczys 8 Comments

[Brian McNamara] fed the output of his guitar pedal back into its input creating a looped synthesizer. He started with an effects pedal he made but now we think he’s ended up with an electronic stomp box. Check out the results in the video after the break. Now he needs to make the knobs foot-friendly so he can monkey with this while playing guitar.

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Embedding An Accelerometer And XBee In A Guitar

May 28, 2010 by Mike Szczys 19 Comments

[JP Carrascal] hacked his guitar by adding motion control while removing the need for wires. He’s using a dual-Arduino system with an Mini Pro inside the guitar and a Duemilanova for the receiver connected to a computer. Wireless is provided by the XBee module seen above and a gutted Wii remote accelerometer is in there for motion sensing. Check out the artfully blurry demonstration of the motion effects after the break.

While he added some potentiometer-based controls there is also an automatic power-down feature. [JP] replaced the mono pickup with a stereo one and used the extra conductor as a switch to activate the additional electronics. We wonder if he also winds his own pickups or builds his own effects pedals.

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Spark Plug Music

May 23, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 20 Comments

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92qql941DM4%5D

This is (video above) perhaps the most abstract way of playing sounds…ever. Yes, we’ve heard Hard Drive music and Obsolete technology bands, but [DJ Sures] brings us the first ever, spark plug instrument.

Much like Velcro and Teflon, the musical spark plug is claimed to be an accident. After testing energy use vs. spark power with his flare stack ignition controller, [DJ Sures] noticed that different frequencies could be produced. It was only a matter of reprogramming before death metal Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is heard. Now he just needs to refine it a bit and build a full stereo cabinet.

The Wii Golf Glove

April 27, 2010 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[Shu Uesugi] is filling a controller void that Nintendo has yet to address. He picked up a golf glove from Target and incorporated it into an air guitar interface. Give the video after the break a chance, you’ll start to see the full potential of this build about three and a half minutes into it. Using an Arduino, a Wii nun-chuck, and his flex-senor adorned glove [Shu] can play individual notes, strum cords, and play around with sound effects such as distortion.

So come on Nintendo, the Power Glove was one of your greatest ideas, where’s our 21st century version? I guess we’ll just have to make our own like [Shu] did. Perhaps we’ll even build our flex sensors from scratch.

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Midi Piano Instructor

April 26, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 18 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7AfiCQQ4nE]

The MIDI piano instructor is a tool aimed at those who wish to learn to play piano, but don’t want to take lessons. The LED bar mounted above the keys lights up to show you exactly what key to press and when. We’ve seen this available in some electronic keyboards for some time, but this unit would be able to fit any standard sized keyboard. Check the page for schematics and pictures.

[via Flickr]