Cornell’s Top Microcontroller Projects 2010

The students of Cornell have posted their year end microcontroller projects for us to admire. Some projects involve creating commercially available products, but a few definitely stood out from the crowd. With a budget of $75, the students created projects like an airship, automated rock band guitar, and a glove-based MIDI interface.

DIY Balloon Airship

First up is an Airship built using 7 party balloons, a few DC motors, and an Amtel microcontroller. Utilizing two pairs of motors the Airship can turn left/right and ascend or descend with ease thanks to it’s near-perfect neutral buoyancy. Watch the airship in the video above.

Automatic Rock Band Guitar

By routing the video output of an Xbox 360 through a microcontroller, these students were able to read a specific horizontal line on the screen to scan for the falling colored notes in the Rock Band interface. After modifying a Rock Band guitar controller to accept both regular, human input and take signals from their microcontroller the students were able to achieve near-perfect scores even in Expert Mode.

Glove-Controlled Midi Interface

Using 8 flex sensors on the tips of their fingers, the user can create various Midi notes. Interfacing the glove with MATLAB allowed the students to be able to adjust which scale they are playing in. From MATLAB the signals are sent to a Macbook’s Garage Band application and played as different instruments. Watch the video below for a full explanation and demonstration: