Nerdgasm! 8-Bit Guitar!

[synrgy]

8-bit arcade guitar sounds (and looks) like a little piece of nerd heaven -- Engadget

The hand built, 8-bit "arcade guitar" that you see above is the result of a DIY senior project, and it's a pretty cool accomplishment. There's not a ton of detail about how it was constructed, but we know that it's got an FPGA (field-programmable gate array) for logic and function, strings and a joystick for adjusting the pitch, and it also boasts selectable waves and save banks. Most importantly, however, the final product sounds really, really good -- and we'd advise you to check the video below.

 

[ittoa666]

Wheres the sevenstring version?

 

[ralphy1976]

seriously, who needs an Axe-Fx??!!!

 

[Randy]

/need

 

[Randy]

I'm not a huge electronics guy, but I'm trying to digest what I'm seeing there. I'm guessing whatever's actually producing the sound is an external unit of some kind, since I don't really see anything in the body itself that would do that and the two lines running into/out of the guitar are the power and the gameport.

 

[eleven59]

I'm not a huge electronics guy, but I'm trying to digest what I'm seeing there. I'm guessing whatever's actually producing the sound is an external unit of some kind, since I don't really see anything in the body itself that would do that and the two lines running into/out of the guitar are the power and the gameport.

Not quite, it looks like there's a 1/4" jack rear mounted in the bottom corner (to the right of the game port in the close-up shot) which appears to be what he has plugged in in the video.

 

[synrgy]

I can't even begin to wrap my brain around what's happening there electronics-wise. I wish I could, though. I'd love to build shit like this. I always wanted to turn an old Nintendo Power Glove into a MIDI controller.

 

[Randy]

Not quite, it looks like there's a 1/4" jack rear mounted in the bottom corner (to the right of the game port in the close-up shot) which appears to be what he has plugged in in the video.

Ah, good eye. Hmm... well, then in that case I'm totally brainfucked.

 

[ellengtrgrl]

Not quite, it looks like there's a 1/4" jack rear mounted in the bottom corner (to the right of the game port in the close-up shot) which appears to be what he has plugged in in the video.

If you mean in the lower left hand corner, that's actually for DC power. IMO, output, goes through the RS232 (what you called the game port) next to it.

 

[eleven59]

If you mean in the lower left hand corner, that's actually for DC power. IMO, output, goes through the RS232 (what you called the game port) next to it.

Nope, I meant what I said

From left to right, you can see the DC power jack, the RS232 port, and then mounted to the board on the right corner is a 1/4" jack (if you plugged into it, the cable would be sticking out the back of the "guitar" which appears to be what's happening in the video).

 

[Espaul]

The thing controlling this is an FPGA. The simplest way of explaining this is programmable hardware. I don't know what kind of sensors he's using, but I'll bet it's some conductive material similar to the touchpad on a laptop og Iphone

Edit: Yes, this is way cool!

 

[NaYoN]

I actually did something rather similar to this with a touchscreen for my embedded systems course. It's really not that hard

 

[MF_Kitten]

it´s 8-bit, meaning it´s essentially an 8 string version!

 

[Demeyes]

That's awesome! I did some stuff with FPGA's in college but nothing as interesting as that.