Used to automate a process of reliably "picking" an electric guitar string to allow for repeatable experiments.
This formed part of my BEng dissertation where I investigated the effects of a magnetic pickup on the vibration response of an electric guitar string (2018).
I also separately developed an optical sensor to determine the position of a point along the guitar string in 2 dimensions (see the dissertation for details). I have noticed that a similar (albeit, 1-dimensional) sensor is being brought to market by oPik.
The findings showed that the magnetic pickups used in electric guitars have the potential to significantly effect the otherwise "free" vibration of the string. Other research1 has since been published that sheds more light on what may be going on.
Software tools:
- Atollic TrueSTUDIO (for embedded C project)
- CubeMX (to interface with microcontroller development board)
Hardware:
- STMicroelectronics Nucleo 64 STMF334R8 microcontroller development board
- Potentiometers
- Veroboard
- Resistors, capacitors
- +-5V power supply
- Feinberg, J. and Yang, B. (2018) ‘Natural-frequency splitting of a guitar string caused by a non-uniform magnetic field’, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Acoustical Society of America, 144(5), pp. EL460–EL464. doi: 10.1121/1.5080465.