Project:

Initial idea:

Plan C: Actually I am building an automatic Kantele, sort of. Kantele is the national instrument of Finland. My 5-string Kantele is automatically plucked with a mechanism built using two servos. One servo plucks the strings and the other lifts the pick so that strings can be skipped. A microcontroller controls the servos according to the song to play. The default song is this. The body of the Kantele is built from laser cut plywood, and the servo mechanism is 3D-printed. Below is a conceptual picture of the body of the Kantele, with the strings missing.




Plan A: I am planning to build an automatic guitar tuning machine. One part of the machine automatically plucks the strings one by one, as the other part rotates the corresponding tuner guided by the third part measuring the frequency of the vibrating string. The construction of the machine requires custom made 3D-printed and laser cut mechanics driven with step motors. Pictures will follow...

Plan B: On the other hand, I also need a guitar to tune, so maybe I'll  build an electric guitar. The body, neck and fretboard of the guitar are shaped with a 3d CNC wood router. The microphones are wound using Juha-Pekka's Guitar pickup coil winding machine. Laser cutter will be used for cutting the various parts needed, such as the pickguard. The 3D printer will be used for fabricating the accessories, if possible.

Fabrication process:

The sound box is made of 4 mm birch plywood laser cut with tabs to fit the parts together. I designed the sound box with Inkscape extension KM Laser Tabbed Box Maker. The parts are glued with Titebond Original wood glue. The holes for the tuners are reinforced and made longer with a piece of 4 mm birch plywood with identical holes glued inside the sound board, i.e. the top of the sound box. The sound hole is a Fab Lab logo, naturally.


The tuners are also made of 4 mm birch plywood, designed with Inkscape and laser cut. The two pieces form a tuning peg. The tuners alone aren't really precise enough to actually tune the instrument by adjusting the tension, and they are too small to twist for the turning force needed. Therefore there are movable nuts, which then determine the tuning of each string by changing the length of the string. The nuts were laser cut from clear 4mm acrylic.




The bridge is laser cut from 4 mm birch plywood, and glued from two pieces. The pieces have laser cut grooves for the strings. When the pieces are glued together, the grooves form holes through the bridge, but I had to clear the holes with a small drill bit. The strings are tied the same way as in a classical guitar. There is also a laser cut groove to hold the saddle laser cut from clear 4 mm acrylic.



The servos have 3D-printed housing. The housing of the lower servo, the one moving the arm above the desired string, is attached to the top of the instrument with screws. The

the plate that came with the servo. The original sketch for connecting the servos was much too complicated and flimsy.



The arm playing the strings is laser cut from 4 mm birch plywood. The upper servo moves the arm up and down so that the strings are played by tapping them, instead of picking, like one would normally do when playing an ordinary Kantele. I tried the picking method, but soon realised, that I probably don't have enough time to make it work by finding the correct flexibility for the pick and arm. However, I am pleased with the current sound of the instrument, so I'll stick with the tapping method.


It looks something like this when everything is put together. I found a 3D model for the servo from here: http://www.123dapp.com/123D_Design/Servo-Radio-Shack-2730765/3195924#



Control electronics:
The control electronics uses the PCB made for the output devices week. I connected all four outputs labelled PWM to 3-pin connectors to be on the safe side. I ended up using the outputs related to the Timer/Counter1 of ATtiny44A. Neil's example code for hardware pwm was a perfect starting point. I needed two hardware PWM outputs for Timer/Counter1, i.e. outputs PA5 and PA6. Neil's example code had only one PWM output, but a modification to TCCR1A solved the problem, with the help from Jani of course! The complete datasheet for the ATtinys is a handful, and finding and understanding what one needs can really be a lot of work:

TCCR1A = (1 << COM1A1) | ((1 << COM1B1)); // clear OC1A and OC1B on compare match,

s to move the arm on correct string and to tap the string to play the instrument.

The current version can play two songs: "Vaka Vanha Wäinämöinen (Steady old Wainamoinen)" is an old Finnish folk song from the Kalevala, the national epic of Finland, traditionally played on Kantele. The other song I composed myself, sort of. One can change the song by pressing the SONG button before the song begins and hold the button until the song begins. The state of the button is polled before playing a song.

The electronics is installed in a laser cut 4 mm birch plywood box. As the LED and push button are in the PCB in the bottom of the box, a light conductor made of clear 4 mm acrylic brings the light to the top of the box. The light conductor is hot glued to the top of the electronics box. The push button is reached with an extension arm made of 4 mm plywood. The 4 by 4 mm stick is glued with the other round plate to make the button. The other plate is glued to the inside of the top of the electronics box to guide the extension arm on top of the push button. The LED blinks in time with the song. The PCB is installed in a frame made of 4 mm plywood.




The power comes either from a 9 V battery or from an external 7.5 - 9 V DC power supply. When then plug of the external power is connected the 9 V battery is disconnected by the power jack.
 


Final Instrument:

I installed old classical guitar strings which I cut in half. I use two low E strings and one A string. Having strings with the same width works, because the tuning is in d minor (d–e–f–g–a), so that the differences between the frequencies is small. I tuned the strings and started testing.



Testing:
The initial tests with the servos showed occasional erratic movements. I suspected the reason to be too small power supply bypass capacitors. So, I installed 100 uF capacitors on both sides of the voltage regulator. The erratic movements almost disappeared. Now that it almost now worked, I decided to measure the voltages. In the worst case the regulator input voltage drops from 7.5 V to 5.7 V, and the 5 V output drops to 2.9 V.

I added more capacitance, this time 1000 uF on both sides of the regulator. Now the input drops to 6.7 V and output to 3.9 V. Even more capacitance is needed, but this seems to work now. Update: I added 2 x 1000 uF and 220 uF to the +5 V power rail. Now the +5 V voltage drops to 4.88 V with 3320 uF capacitance. Problem solved.



Regulator voltage drop with 100 uF capacitors:

Regulator voltage drop with 1100 uF capacitors:




Making of the Video:
The servos are rather loud. So, for the video I made a cardboard box to hold a microphone under the instrument to catch more the actual sound of the instrument, but not the sound of the servos.

I recorded the video in Full HD with my compact camera, compressed the video bitrate to 1500 kbps with Handbrake, which also added the subtitles I made in SRT-format. Then to make sure, that the video is playable in browsers, I used avconv with the following parameters provided by Neil:

HTML5 MP4 encoding
variable bit rate 1080p MP3:
   avconv -i input_video -vcodec libx264 -crf 25 -preset medium -vf scale=-1:1080 -acodec libmp3lame -q:a 4 -ar 48000 -ac 2 output_video.mp4



Problems and solutions:
- It took a while to understand that the initial servo mechanism was too complicated and flimsy. Bolting the servos together in 90 degree angle is simple and solid.
- I had many complex ideas for the tuners, most of them borrowing from guitars, but a simple tuning peg in a hole does the trick, with movable nut of course.
- The initial idea was to pick the strings sidewards, but it turned out to be too time consuming to succeed. I happened to tap the strings with a pencil and got a decent sound, which was even better when done with a servo.
- The behavior of the servos was erratic in the first tests. A lot of capacitance had to be added to keep the power supply stable.
- The servos are too loud, probably because of the internal gears. However, now that I know, that I can get a decent sound by tapping the strings, why not replace the servos with solenoids, one for each string. The vertical movement is easy the accomplish with a simple solenoid. The solenoids can even be made inhouse with Juha's Guitar pickup coil winding machine.

Bill of materials:

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