Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
34 SELF ADJUSTING VOLUME PEDAL
Chris Jurczewski
Noah DuVal
Norbert Lazarz
Nithin Balaji Shanthini Praveena Purushothaman design_document2.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
photo3.jpg
photo1.jpg
presentation1.pdf
proposal2.pdf
Team Members:
- nlazarz2
- nbduval2
- cmj7

# Problem

One problem with adjusting volume manually is that it's tedious and often causes changes in the tone of the amp. Another problem this poses is during live performances, when you would like guitars to be less or more prominent when playing different songs, there is no way for the player themselves to adjust themselves without relying on someone mixing during their set. Volume is also room dependent so changing locations will result in the volume being changed which can often be unwanted.

# Solution

To solve these problems we propose a pedal that will adjust the volume of the amp’s output depending on the chosen decibel setting located on the pedal. This project will have two subsystems that will work together to collect, process, and alter the output of the amp. The first subsystem is the pedal itself which will allow the user to select the desired dB setting they would like to hear. The second is the microphone attachment to the guitar which will collect auditory data from the amp and transmit it wirelessly to the pedal. After the pedal receives the signal it will filter out the unnecessary frequencies and bring the volume of the signal up to the preset number and keep that volume wherever the player is.

# Solution Components

## Pedal Subsystem

The pedal itself will contain the main PCB which will be in charge of taking in readings from microphones on the guitar. The microcontroller will then be programmed to filter the audio so there is as little noise as possible and will not consider frequencies outside a guitar’s range. It will then use these readings to determine the level of volume it tells the amp to output. This will be determined by averaging the sound over a certain period of time and bringing it up to the preset number on the pedal depending on the distance of the player.

- Possibly looking at using the ESP32-S3 Microcontroller due to its built in wifi and bluetooth capabilities that we would like to use to communicate between the microphone and custom pcb
- A multitude of resistors, capacitors and OpAmps to create an analog noise filter before the digital filter to remove general ambient noise.
- A 4.4mm jack is needed to connect the pedal to a guitar/amp

## Guitar Subsystem

On the front and back of the guitar will be wireless microphones that will pick up the outgoing sound from the amp and will send it to the first subsystem to be used for filtering and calculations.

- Will require some form of bluetooth microphone that will connect to the pedal
- Will need some form of external power and a way to easily attach and detach from a guitar

# Criterion For Success

- Audio is noticeably changed by the varying distance between player and amp
- Audio stays consistent for player and does not jump or stutter
- Audio does not change tone or effects created by other pedals or amp presets
- Pedal is not affected by frequencies outside it’s set range (80-1500 Hz)
-Internal components are relatively inexpensive

Dynamic Legged Robot

Joseph Byrnes, Kanyon Edvall, Ahsan Qureshi

Featured Project

We plan to create a dynamic robot with one to two legs stabilized in one or two dimensions in order to demonstrate jumping and forward/backward walking. This project will demonstrate the feasibility of inexpensive walking robots and provide the starting point for a novel quadrupedal robot. We will write a hybrid position-force task space controller for each leg. We will use a modified version of the ODrive open source motor controller to control the torque of the joints. The joints will be driven with high torque off-the-shelf brushless DC motors. We will use high precision magnetic encoders such as the AS5048A to read the angles of each joint. The inverse dynamics calculations and system controller will run on a TI F28335 processor.

We feel that this project appropriately brings together knowledge from our previous coursework as well as our extracurricular, research, and professional experiences. It allows each one of us to apply our strengths to an exciting and novel project. We plan to use the legs, software, and simulation that we develop in this class to create a fully functional quadruped in the future and release our work so that others can build off of our project. This project will be very time intensive but we are very passionate about this project and confident that we are up for the challenge.

While dynamically stable quadrupeds exist— Boston Dynamics’ Spot mini, Unitree’s Laikago, Ghost Robotics’ Vision, etc— all of these robots use custom motors and/or proprietary control algorithms which are not conducive to the increase of legged robotics development. With a well documented affordable quadruped platform we believe more engineers will be motivated and able to contribute to development of legged robotics.

More specifics detailed here:

https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece445/pace/view-topic.asp?id=30338

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