Electrical guitars aren’t simply fashionable as a result of they allow amplification, but in addition as a result of they create an audio sign that may be simply manipulated. Most guitarists have a handful of units to carry out these manipulations—referred to as “results”—in actual time. These units normally have both on/off foot switches or pedals that allow extra gradual modifications. However a pedal like that solely has a single axis and due to this fact can solely alter one unbiased worth. To dramatically broaden on that potential, Gary Rig constructed this guitar results “puck” that operates in three axes.
A conventional pedal strikes on a pivot (pitch in 3D area) and so its place can solely change one impact parameter at a time. For instance, the enduring Cry Child Wah pedal lets the guitarist modify the quantity of “wah.” If don’t know what wah is, ask your dad. Rig’s results puck provides two extra axes, so it additionally accepts roll and yaw motion. These two further axes could be tied to fully unbiased results parameters. Perhaps pitch controls wah, roll controls overdrive depth, and yaw controls delay quantity—the probabilities are countless.
It might be attainable to construct a tool that immediately manipulates an electrical guitar sign utilizing this management scheme, however that might be troublesome and would restrict future modifications. As an alternative, Rig designed this puck to manage MIDI results. It alters the results utilized to a digital audio stream—both coming from a guitar in actual time or anything. Some may take into account that much less genuine than an analog results pedal, however it’s much more versatile.
That selection made it attainable for Rig to construct this machine with solely two elements: a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller-based improvement board (just like the Raspberry Pi Pico) and a six-axis IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) sensor. These go contained in the 3D-printed puck, which attaches to a ball joint for full motion.
The IMU experiences its personal orientation, which the RP2040 can use to calculate pitch, roll, and yaw values. It then converts these values into MIDI instructions to output to a pc linked through USB. So far as the pc is aware of, it’s receiving enter from an ordinary USB MIDI controller. Which means that it’s going to work with nearly every bit of audio software program ever launched and could be set to manage no matter parameters the person desires.
Many guitarists have pedal boards with a number of results pedals, so this might scale back that quantity by two-thirds and in addition introduce extra dynamic modifications.