No Strings Attached ~
The Laser Guitar
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ABOUT



Our senior design project the “Laser Guitar” attempts to create a new innovative instrument which can be played like a guitar, where the strings are lasers. This is done using communication between two sensing systems, one which determines which note to play, called our “Fretting” system, and the other which determines when to play each note, our “Strumming” system. All detection is done by photodiodes operating in photoconductive mode so that they act as light dependent current sources. The current is run through resistors in series and a voltage divider is used to return information to the MCU.

Specifications

Below are some of the engineering specifications we accomplished for our "Laser Guitar".

Size

Roughly the size of a ukulele (43cm x 10cm).

Weight

Under five pounds.

Saftey

Class 3R Lasers.

Strings

Four lasers that act as four different strings.

Reponse Time

Under 50ms.

Polyphony

The ability to play multiple notes at once.

Product

Short video of our finished product.

Implementation

Below are diagrams and schematics of our overall project design.
Block Diagram
Project Overview
Basic View
General Perspective
Flow Chart
Software Perspective
Strum PCB
Strumming System
Microcontroller PCB
(MCU)
Fret PCB
Fretting System

DOCUMENTS

Below are list of downloadable files from Senior Desin I & II

Senior Design 1

Divide and Conquer Document

Final Report Document

Senior Design 2

CDR Slides

Midterm Presentation Slides

8 Page Conference/Committee Paper

10 - 15 Minute Demo Video

Final Presentation Slides
Final Video Presentation

Final Report Document

The Squad

University of Central Florida's Finest.

Jacob Legler

Photonics

Jonathan Spurgeon

Electrical Engineering

Juan Gamero

Computer Engineering

Alexander Truong-Mai

Computer Engineering