ECE 4760: Final Project

ukule-LED

 

Raghav Subramaniam (ras578@cornell.edu)

Jeff Tian (yt336@cornell.edu)

Figure 1: Obligatory Glamor Shot

"A modified ukulele that uses lights to teach you how to play chords and songs."

project soundbyte

ukule-LED is a ukulele with LEDs embedded in its fretboard. These LEDs can light up in configurations corresponding to different chords, which can aid the ukulele player in learning how to play certain chords, or can act as a chord reference for a more advanced player. ukule-LED has two modes of operations. First, in "play" mode, the user can feed the system a song file, a text file that contains the tempo, time signature, and an ordered listing of the chords in a song. The ukulele will light up the correct chords at the correct times in the song. In "practice" mode, the user can specify a single chord, which is lit up indefinitely.

ukule-LED is made up of two major components. First is the ukulele itself. We use sixteen RGB LEDs, embedded in the fretboard before the first four frets on each string. These LEDs are wired to a microcontroller, which is mounted on the ukulele itself. The ukulele is wired to a PC, which runs a companion program with a command line interface. From this interface, the user can put the device in "play" mode and specify a path to a song file, or put the device in "practice" mode and specify a chord name.


Appendices    top

A. Schematics

Figure 8: High Level Hardware Schematic

B. Cost Details

Part Number

Vendor

Quantity

Price

Total Cost

ATmega1284P

Lab stock

1

$5

$5.00

Melokia UK13 13" Soprano Ukulele

Amazon

1

$23.99

$23.99

NeoPixel Mini PCB - Pack of 5

Adafruit

4

$4.95

$19.80

Small Solder Board

Lab stock

1

$1.00

$1.00

Custom PCB

Lab stock

1

$4

$4.00

Header Pins

Lab stock

20

$0.05

$1.00

Capacitors

Lab stock

1

$0

$0.00

Resistors

Lab stock

1

$0

$0.00

12V Power Supply

Lab stock

1

$5

$5.00

USB Serial Cable

Lab stock

1

$7

$7.00

Wire

Lab stock

4’

$0

$0.00

Heat Shrink Tubing

Lab stock

6”

$0

$0.00

Total cost

$66.79

C. Distribution of Work

Raghav Subramaniam Jeff Tian
Overall Hardware Design Overall Softare Design
LED and Board Soldering Ukulele Dremeling
Song File Format Design Song Parsing Python Frontend
C Chord Lookup Table Generation Script Data Transmit Encoding/Decoding
Main C Code Implementation Main C Code Implementation
Website Website

D. Code Listing