Automatic GH Player
Envying some of my friends ability to play guitar hero, I wanted to avoid the time consuming practice that this game requires and build a device that would play guitar hero for me. My initial goal was to play any song on easy mode and then work my way up from there. My robot was based on the MSP432 breakout board and allowed me to explore the intersection of mechanical, electrical, and software engineering.
These are the prototype button presser in action. The base of my robot clips on to any guitar and remains snug. Each servo was individually controlled by the MSP432 and was connected to a finger that was designed to minimize the torque required to pull each finger and to maximize the speed at which the button was pressed.
Here you can see the strummer in action. Using PID control, it was able to avoid faulty strums and realign itself in case one of my friends didn't like losing and wanted to mess with it. Using a magnetic encoder, the MSP432 was able to easily determine the position of the motor and accurately return to its original position within a half a second of a incorrect positioning, which was about the time between strums in Easy mode.
These are the schematic drawings for the Auto Guitar Hero Player. It utilizes photosensitive resistors to sense notes coming across the screen, relaying it to the MSP432 by an analog to digital conversion. If the resistor hit a certain threshold (set differently for each resistor), the MSP would send a signal to the corresponding servo and to the strummer to correctly play the game.