Ukulele Assist

We were inspired by the drummer of Deft Leopard, who is a phenomenal musician despite having only one arm, to attempt to extend this capacity to stringed instruments. We built Ukulele Assist to automatically strum an input pattern to allow single-armed people to play by performing chords. You use a potentiometer to set the tempo, and click in a strum pattern to allow you to play different songs. We also added a UI using LEDs to indicate where in the pattern is currently playing.

The build is a laser-cut rack-and-pinion gantry which drives a pick across the strings using a motor. It is ran on an Arduino, and uses a feedback mechanism using limit switches to rapidly move the pick across the strings. The rack and pinion on the final prototype was unfortunately stripped some during testing, but we plan to replace the mechanism allowing more reliable motion.

We have learned a ton in the last 24 hours. Our lead programmer had barely touched Arduino before scratch programming an robotic system and UI. We did a lot of mutual teaching, and taught each other woodworking, soldering, coding, CAD, and musical skills.