Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Robotics Monday: Electric Guitar

Name of Model: NXT Electric Guitar
Created by: Dave Parker at http://www.nxtprograms.com/
Found at: http://www.nxtprograms.com/guitar/steps.html
Details:
I'm not really sure when http://www.nxtprograms.com/ got started, but there's already a hefty library of easy projects you can do with only the materials in the LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT kit (and a computer for programming the robots) piled up there. The site's been getting some heavy attention the past few days - the official LEGO Mindstorms news page featured him and interviewed him, and fan-created community blog The NXT Step has added him as a contributor (which, I hope, means we'll be notified about his future projects via their RSS feed). Here's one project that caught my attention - an "electric guitar" program that uses the ultrasonic sensor to determine what chord to play. Of course, a makeshift theremin would probably be more easy/fun, but electric guitars do get more of a "wow" reaction from people who listen to "normal" music. Did I mention that a program and realistic chord samples are available on his site? Dave Parker thinks of everything. I have a feeling you'll be seeing more of him around here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We love www.nxtprograms.com our 5 year old twins can build the projects themselves. See Jelle playing Deep Purple's smoke on the water here