Week 1 Progress Report

The SmartBow

My project for this semester is the SmartBow. It is an electromagnetic bowing device for the guitar which vibrates the strings via electromagnetic pulses. This device will consist of six pairs of magnetic inductors; one pair per string, mounted discreetly under the strings. Each pair will be independently controlled by a corresponding button (likely capacitive touch) that may be mounted anywhere on the guitar according to the user’s preference. This will ultimately allows the user to “bow” each string by pressing the associated button, creating a unique sound and potentially infinite sustain.

Here is a diagram of what the SmartBow will look like when mounted on a guitar:

I have a good grasp on most of the concepts involved in this project. I have experience with creating inductors or pickups, capacitive touch sensors, as well as general digital/analog circuit design. I am also experienced with 3D printing, laser cutting, and general fabrication. The piece of this project that will require the most learning is the PCB design. I’d like to create a nice, small PCB to host the microcontroller as well as some small surface-mount electronics (to save space and also because I’d like to learn about surface-mount).

Here is a video of a very crude prototype with one pair of inductors working on one string. This circuit is entirely analog, whereas the final version will involve more digital electronics.