Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
32 Maestro Mittens
Kushal Majmundar
Shayna Kapadia
Tulika Gupta
Chi Zhang design_document1.pdf
design_document4.pdf
design_document5.pdf
design_document6.pdf
design_document9.pdf
design_document10.pdf
design_document11.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
other1.docx
proposal1.pdf
Problem:
Not everyone knows how to play an instrument. And if they do, they might not know how to do it well and be able to stay in key. But they would like to be able to make some music!

Solution Overview:
We propose a hand gesture controlled instrument. Much like how a conductor waves their hands around, so would you. The gestures would translate into notes, and things like how quickly you move would make the music faster or slower as well. An accelerometer/gyroscope would be able to detect speeds and direction, while flex resistors on your fingers could control other musical aspects. These flex sensors will control how many notes you could play at a given time. For example, if you want to play a 3 note chord you could hold three fingers down.
The gesture control would be just for one instrument. We plan on making our own tones to use. For each note in a given range of notes, we will produce our own unique sound. In order to ensure that the sounds made by the user are pleasant to the ear, we will make the range of notes possible set to only notes in a specific key.

Solution Components
Power Subsystem
The gloves will be powered with the help of a lithium ion battery.

Sensor Subsystem
An Accelerometer/Gyroscope sensor placed at your wrist which can calculate the speed of your hands as well as the angle. The angle value will be used to distort the chord you play with your fingers.
Flex Sensors will be placed in each finger of the glove to detect the angle at which you bend your fingers and how many fingers are bent.

Processing Subsystem
An ESP8266 wifi board to accumulate and send out the data to a computer which will then realize the note to play and then play it.

Criterion for Success
Our gloves will allow the wearer to produce some sort of music in response to their hand/arm gestures and motions.

There’s a company called Stretchsense which has a hand gesture based glove. However, their product isn’t specialized as a musical instrument, as our project aims to be. Also, it appears that their gloves produce music based on their orientation with respect to a curved table, not just the gloves themselves. In addition, their product is very expensive and uses expensive sensors; while ours will aim to be more cost efficient.

The Marching Band Assistant

Wynter Chen, Alyssa Louise Licudine, Prashant Shankar

The Marching Band Assistant

Featured Project

NetID/Names

wynterc2 (Wynter Chen), alyssal3 (Alyssa Licudine), shankar7 (Prashant Shankar)

Problem

Drum majors lead and conduct marching bands. One of their main jobs is to maintain tempo for the musicians by moving their hands in specific patterns. However, many drum majors, especially high school students, need to learn how to conduct specific tempos off the top of their head and maintain a consistent tempo without assistance for performances. Even those with musical experience have difficulty knowing for certain what tempo they're conducting without a metronome.

Solution Overview

Our project consists of an arm attachment that aids drum major conducting. The attachment contains an accelerometer that helps determine the tempo in beats per minute via hand movement. A display shows the beats per minute, which allows the drum major to adjust their speed as necessary in real time. The microcontroller data is wirelessly transmitted, and a program can be downloaded that not only visualizes the data in real-time, but provides an option to save recorded data for later. There is also a convenient charging port for the device.

This project is a unique invention that aims to help marching bands. There have been previous projects and inventions that have also digitized the conducting experience, such as the Digital Conducting Baton from Spring 2015. However, these have been in the form of a baton rather than a glove, and are used to alter music files as opposed to providing feedback. Additionally, orchestra conductors use very delicate motions with a baton, while drum majors create large, sharper motions with their arms; thus, we believed that an arm attachment was better suited for marching band usage. Unlike other applications that only integrate digital instruments, this project seeks to assist live performers.

Link to RFA: https://courses.grainger.illinois.edu/ece445/pace/view-topic.asp?id=37939

Project Videos