We have been, over the past week, improving our rigs that hold our solenoids and allow them to work on our guitar. We got our battery so we got all of our solenoids hooked up and working, we 3D printed the parts we needed.

Update Week 7

We have received our solenoids in the mail for chords and acquired a guitar for our instrument's base. We are working on SolidWorks parts for the solenoids to push down three strings each; we wish to 3d print these, potentially through the ExCITe Lab. We modified our design for the strum mechanism so a solenoid will push six guitar pics (one for each string), Some of the chords don't strum all the strings so some of the pics will be attached to mini servos (acquired by the ECE desk) mounted on the solenoid.

Design Proposal

For our robotic guitar, sound comes from the strings plucked by servos over the sound hole. This pitch is then altered by tubular push solenoids pushing down on each string in the right fret. We are making a song with 3 independent chords. This is because each solenoid will have a 3d printed part to push down the whole chord at once, consolidating solenoids. We though of this idea because we can just buy 3 solenoids instead of 9 and we are paying for these parts so we need to be economical. In terms of musical range we would be able to play chords D, G, and C. All of the servos and solenoids will be powered by one rechargeable 12 volt battery. Each device will be wired in parallel through the breadboard and have its own resistor.

Overview

Our design consists of a six stringed guitar hit by 6 piano hammers. We will use a servo for each hammer and corresponding string on the guitar.