Laser guitar

[DJDoubleYou]

Hey guys,

One week ago a friend of mine and i watched the vid of ean's preformance with the guitar hero guitar. We tought is was very cool but it needed a mod. We started thinking and came up with this:



The idea was that interupting a laser worked the same as pushing a button.

Today we finished al the thinking and we had al the parts in our basket, but then we realized it is a cool, but toaly useles design cause it's very unpractical.
Don't really know why i'm showing this, maybe cuz i hope someone has an idea of how to make it work, lookin cool and practical. Otherwise i'll stick with the original design

[deevey]

[youtube]WkkhcwXpYy4[/youtube]

Google or Youtube "Lazer harp" .. or talk to Jean Michelle Jarre

[DJDoubleYou]

That's where the idea came from

[sarasin]

The original was Jean Michel Jarre I think...

[deevey]

Theres a bundle of videos how to build one on youtube.

[DigitalManipulation]

Pretty neat! I am actually doing something like this for a engineering project using an arduino as the brain. Unfortunately there might be some issues with the size of the lasers fitting on the neck with as many as you have here. Also your going to need like a fog machine or anything to get particles into the air. Also most photo diodes or photo resistors are very small so having them at the top of the neck might be a pain as far as lining them all up! Still it will be a fun project and shouldn't be to expensive so go for it!

[DJDoubleYou]

Yeah, we won't use something like an arduino, just eclectrical components (comparator, invertor [NOT-Gate], photocell, relay ect.), cause the guitar is the brain. And we have a fog machine and we are planning on using it in a dark room. It's just that the risk of interupting another laser is so big that it makes the mod completly useles. We came up with solution for this, "freezing" the lasers so they stoped "pressing" the buttons. But then we realized they we would use the device "freezed" al the time.

[DigitalManipulation]

What are you going to use to interpret the photocell data? It may prove difficult to have one shut off completely with another laser shining right next to it (I am assuming the guitar hero controller will only know on/off and not ready in the frequency of the photo cell). Also a possible solution maybe to have the guitar strings in different lengths starting with the smallest on the bottom.

[DJDoubleYou]

Different legths is a solution if they aren't aimed accurate enough. I made a simple exlanation, not very detailed (Made it online @ sumo paint so that's the reason i messed up a bit)

[Zhao]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikdcfnVMJzo
Found that not long ago, very similar to what you're doing. Can't find any info on it though