Project team: Chun Err Chai, Nikki Chen, Vivek Claver, Sijia Scarlett Teng
Course: Interactive Device Design, fall 2016
Many people want to learn guitar, but beginners often give up early on. Nektar aims to address this by empowering anyone to play songs: this interactive, low-cost device uses laser projection to illuminate specific chord positions, providing intuitive visual guidance that beginning guitar players can follow. These chord positions change dynamically as the user-selected song progresses, and the projections’ speed can be controlled by the user to match their individual learning preferences as they play along with the audio.
Nektar’s operation centers on a revolving mirror that spins about its horizontal axis rapidly. In order to achieve this, a mirror frame is mounted onto the shaft of a high-speed motor, with its angular position tracked using a high resolution motor encoder. When the orientation of the mirror reaches its desired angular position, individual laser diodes are then switched on for a short instant, illuminating a particular fret on the guitar fingerboard. As the mirror revolves rapidly, the lasers are then pulsed at a sufficiently high frequency to create a continuous illumination for the human eye — guiding users through their favorite songs.
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