How it works (also know as the manual)
There are two ways to
play the guitar. You can make it play
automatically or you can play the guitar manually
by pressing note per note and make a song like that.
The visual basic program also has an interface that allows you to control
all four of the motors and make them take a certain number of steps, this is
called the motor testing mode.
We'll explain the working of all of the modes here. You'll also find some
flowcharts to explain the working.
You can play songs manually by selecting the manual mode option. In this screen you get a picture of a guitar and you can press on the frets. If you do that, the selected fret will be pressed and the string will be struck. That way you can play a song by selecting note per note.
To play a song you first have to initialize the motors to the starting
positions. First you have to make sure you enable the motors in the visual
basic program. Then you have to move the roll towards the first fret
manually and lift the weight so there's a pressure on the strings.
The next step to play a song is to initialize everything. This is done by
pressing the initialize button in the visual basic program. When this is
done you'll start an initializing sequence that puts the motors in their
respective starting positions.
The weight goes down so the roll can be moved freely. Otherwise the roll would be blocked by the pressure.
The plectrum moves towards its switch.
The roll moves towards its switch.
The plectrum turns in such a way that it presses the switch.
The plectrum and the roll start moving away from the switch to go to their starting positions that have been defined in the visual basic program.
A message box will appear on the screen letting you know the system is initialized
Now that the system is initialised you can play the notes you want until you're tired of playing.
If you want to see a nice schematic view of it all, we recommend you look at the flowchart we made of the manual mode. It gives you a nice total view on it all.
To play a song you have
first to initialize the motors to the starting positions. First you have to
make sure you enable the motors in the visual basic program. Then you have
to move the roll towards the first fret manually and lift the weight so
there's a pressure on the strings.
The next step to play a song is to initialize everything. This is done by
pressing the initialize button in the visual basic program. When this is
done you'll start an initializing sequence that puts the motors in their
respective starting positions.
The weight goes down so the roll can be moved freely. Otherwise the roll would be blocked by the pressure.
The plectrum moves towards it's switch.
The roll moves towards it's switch.
The plectrum turns in such a way that it presses the switch.
The plectrum and the roll start moving away from the switch to go to their starting positions that have been defined in the visual basic program.
A message box will appear on the screen letting you know the system is initialized
Now that the guitar has
been initialized you can load a song. We have made some predefined songs in
our own format ".song". This file holds all the info for the song. If you
want to make your own songs, you can find the procedure
here.
After you press "Load song" you'll get a form to browse your pc to ".song"
files. Just select the song you want to be played and load the song. You'll
see the song appear on the form and after that you can play the song by
pressing "Play Song".
Now... everything will go
automatically, you'll even see the lyrics appear on the screen when the note
is played, so don't hesitate to sing a long with our guitar. But most of
all, we'd say ENJOY!!!!
For people that are
REALLY REALLY interested we have made a flowchart
of the automatic mode to show you how the entire
system works.
For all other people... you can return to the technical info page... or you
can read on still and read about our motor testing mode.
Top
If you want to see what
the effect of a certain number of steps is, or if you want to test
something, we've also implemented an interface where you can enter the
number of steps you want a motor to make. This is done by selecting the
motor testing mode. In here you just enter the number of steps you want a
motor to make, and press "ON". If you want a motor to stop, you press
"OFF". And if you want to change the direction, you click the checkbox next
to direction.
You already guessed it... the interface is quite simple and logic, though
very useful. Especially for calibrating the system.