Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
33 Gesture-based light design system
Debjit Das
Ian Fitzgerald
Mateusz Chorazy
Anthony Caton design_document0.pdf
final_paper0.pdf
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presentation0.pptx
proposal0.pdf
We propose using a pair of gloves to control light design on a stage, which can be used for uses practical to musical performances and theatre shows. The purpose of this project is to accomplish simpler goals in relation to these areas rather than running a full production. This could be controlling a spot light on an actor or, in a musical production it could allow a unique control over the lights that most, if any, groups out there do not have. This means the focus would be more for the flash and performance, or simplicity in the case of theatre, than for large scale utility.

There will be a limitation to keep the complexity within the scope of this course. The limitation is that the light designer cannot walk freely in relation to the lights. The designer must remain behind or in front of the lights. Think of this as the light designer must be on stage directing the lights or off stage. With this limitation, we will not have to solve the problem of keep track of where the designer is. Now with the designer and lights both in fixed locations, we will still have a control unit with all the lights in the system connected to the control unit. All lights in the system will be servo motor based. The designer will still wear a single glove that communicates to the control unit via Bluetooth.

The glove will have its own microcontroller, and bluetooth transmitter, one flex resistor in the pointer finger, and four buttons and four LEDs, and will be powered via 9Volt battery. The designer will select which lights to control via the buttons and the glove will indicate which lights are currently selected via the LEDs. Further, the designer will control which direction the currently selected lights point at by pointing his finger and gesturing the direction he/she wants the lights to point towards. When the finger is not fully extended (flex resistor not active), the lights will not move.

Musical Hand

Ramsey Foote, Thomas MacDonald, Michelle Zhang

Musical Hand

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# Musical Hand

Team Members:

- Ramesey Foote (rgfoote2)

- Michelle Zhang (mz32)

- Thomas MacDonald (tcm5)

# Problem

Musical instruments come in all shapes and sizes; however, transporting instruments often involves bulky and heavy cases. Not only can transporting instruments be a hassle, but the initial purchase and maintenance of an instrument can be very expensive. We would like to solve this problem by creating an instrument that is lightweight, compact, and low maintenance.

# Solution

Our project involves a wearable system on the chest and both hands. The left hand will be used to dictate the pitches of three “strings” using relative angles between the palm and fingers. For example, from a flat horizontal hand a small dip in one finger is associated with a low frequency. A greater dip corresponds to a higher frequency pitch. The right hand will modulate the generated sound by adding effects such as vibrato through lateral motion. Finally, the brains of the project will be the central unit, a wearable, chest-mounted subsystem responsible for the audio synthesis and output.

Our solution would provide an instrument that is lightweight and easy to transport. We will be utilizing accelerometers instead of flex sensors to limit wear and tear, which would solve the issue of expensive maintenance typical of more physical synthesis methods.

# Solution Components

The overall solution has three subsystems; a right hand, left hand, and a central unit.

## Subsystem 1 - Left Hand

The left hand subsystem will use four digital accelerometers total: three on the fingers and one on the back of the hand. These sensors will be used to determine the angle between the back of the hand and each of the three fingers (ring, middle, and index) being used for synthesis. Each angle will correspond to an analog signal for pitch with a low frequency corresponding to a completely straight finger and a high frequency corresponding to a completely bent finger. To filter out AC noise, bypass capacitors and possibly resistors will be used when sending the accelerometer signals to the central unit.

## Subsystem 2 - Right Hand

The right subsystem will use one accelerometer to determine the broad movement of the hand. This information will be used to determine how much of a vibrato there is in the output sound. This system will need the accelerometer, bypass capacitors (.1uF), and possibly some resistors if they are needed for the communication scheme used (SPI or I2C).

## Subsystem 3 - Central Unit

The central subsystem utilizes data from the gloves to determine and generate the correct audio. To do this, two microcontrollers from the STM32F3 series will be used. The left and right hand subunits will be connected to the central unit through cabling. One of the microcontrollers will receive information from the sensors on both gloves and use it to calculate the correct frequencies. The other microcontroller uses these frequencies to generate the actual audio. The use of two separate microcontrollers allows for the logic to take longer, accounting for slower human response time, while meeting needs for quicker audio updates. At the output, there will be a second order multiple feedback filter. This will get rid of any switching noise while also allowing us to set a gain. This will be done using an LM358 Op amp along with the necessary resistors and capacitors to generate the filter and gain. This output will then go to an audio jack that will go to a speaker. In addition, bypass capacitors, pull up resistors, pull down resistors, and the necessary programming circuits will be implemented on this board.

# Criterion For Success

The minimum viable product will consist of two wearable gloves and a central unit that will be connected together via cords. The user will be able to adjust three separate notes that will be played simultaneously using the left hand, and will be able to apply a sound effect using the right hand. The output audio should be able to be heard audibly from a speaker.

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