A while back I promised a Guitar Hero Self Playing Guitar so I went about creating an optical array that could read data from a PC and translate that into button input on a guitar hero guitar. Now I could of went all out and used a USB Dev kit but there is a few reasons I went this route for one this is a low cost project Dev kits would of put this out of range for most people. I wanted this mod to be low tech easy enough for anyone to accomplish.
Here is the guitar I used it has an LCD originally I wanted to use the optics on this LCD but was forced to use them on the PC do to there being to much "Light Noise" for the optics and it would cause it to receive false data. I may revise this later with a PIC to measure the resistance of each color.
Ok here is how it all works the optical array is made up of 6 light to voltage sensors 6 LED's (purely for visual satisfaction) an USB Cable to supply the 5 volts and 6 reed relays. The USB cable supplies 5v to the light to voltage sensors. When the PC monitor flashes a sequence to the Light To Voltage Sensor depending on the intensity of the light it will output voltage to the LED and Reed Relay (Some monitors you may have to adjust the brightness for the sensor to out put the required 3v to drive the coil in the Reed Relay). Now when the LED and the Reed Relay receives Voltage the LED illuminates (The Led server no real purpose other then letting you know the system is working) and the Reed Relays Coil get current causing a magnetic field to close a Reed switch which in turn closes the circuit to which ever button the Reed switch is attached to. So that’s how the hardware works. The soft ware basic as it is works like this there are 5 programmable note bars you can program songs with tempo speed and button length. Once a song is fully programmed you can save that song or send it to the guitar at the appropriate time. Entering the song is very tedious and I hope to automate this in the future
Nice, but it'd be even nicer if you could trigger the buttons straight from the game instead of another program. And since you have software anyways, why not use the || or serial port? (granted, might deviate from the "easy to build" factor a bit)
Though it is a completed project, so it belongs on its worthy shrine: The News Forum!
