On 9th of October the first meeting of the third semester with my supervisor took place. We decided to meet to set the objectives to be reached during the third semester and to determine how the project and the two setups should be developed further.
The first question that arose was whether the focus of the development efforts should be placed on creative advancements of the tonal possibilities of the two setups (for example developing more effects to be controlled by the sensors’ data) or if the focus should be placed on fine-tuning the current setups and developing them into final products.
After some deliberation, it was decided to focus on further developing the existing setups into final products and pass on working on new tonal possibilities. As one of the goals of this project is to test the final setups on guitarists, it was deemed more important that the final setups should also look the part and function properly instead of having endless tonal possibilities but lacking in reliability and looks.
With the main focus of the final product phase set, it was decided to concentrate the development effort on three areas:
- Design of setup attachment
- Type of data transmission
- Software integration
These areas involve the following tasks:
- Design of setup attachment
Left hand setup:
- 3D print cases for ToF sensor and microcontroller ESP32
- Develop attachment device that is flexible enough to work on Fender AND Gibson headstock shapes
- Extra knob for fret threshold setting
- Extra knob for fine-tuning fret detection (?)
- Determine power supply -> battery
Right hand setup:
- 3D print cases for IMU sensor and microcontroller ESP32
- Extra calibration button
- Develop attachment -> use snap fasteners to clip sensor + microcontroller on
- Determine power supply -> battery
- Strong cover cable to connect sensor and microcontroller
- Type of data transmission
Via OSC (current solution)
Pros: wireless, already works
Cons: integration in DAW more complicated (maybe different for every DAW)
Via Bluetooth + MIDI (BLE) (probably best solution)
Pros: integration in DAW probably easier with “Learn MIDI”, ESP32 has Bluetooth
Cons: does not work yet, fast enough? USB dongle necessary?
Via radio transmission (?)
- Software integration
Goal: make setups useable within DAW
As already touched upon in previous blog posts, some experiments were done using the Camomile VST software. While achieving some success, it was still decided to abandon the idea of working with Camomile. On one hand, it was not possible to solve the issue of the effect not affecting the recorded signal. On the other hand, the Camomile environment was deemed impractical for the left hand setup.
Instead, the development efforts will focus on OSC or BLE + MIDI. Especially the latter solution appears to be promising because one could use the MIDI learn function that comes with practically any DAW that allows the user to use any plugins and customize controllable parameters within the DAW.
With these goals and focus areas set, the third project phase is really about to start. The first issue that will be tackled is determining the type of data transmission as well as the software integration.
