OpenChord.org V0 - Build a Real Guitar Guitar Hero/Rock Band Controller

Step 7 Plug in the Microcontroller and Test

Now we need to load up the microcontroller. If you're using Arudino, the following code can be simply downloaded and entered into your Arudino IDE and ought to work. If you're feeling ambitious, though, the most recent version of the code will be here. If you're using a different microcontroller, the code should be easily adapted into C, something I'll work on soon. Since the Arduino IDE can also take in standard C, it's mostly the port mappings that need to be changed.

Anyhow, before we get ahead of ourselves, let's use the PC to test out the circuitry in the guitar. In the Arduino IDE, switch to the serial viewer. The program is set up to transmit a line of text data each time the state of the guitar string and fret "switches" changes. The lines that get printed tell you which strings are hitting which "buttons", so play around with different combinations of fingerings.