Violin Gloves

This is the project my friend and I pursued back at Harvey Mudd. Called "violin gloves," we set out to design an instrument that would imitate a violin and could be easily learned by anyone.

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Using copper tape as a conductor and sending current directly to the four fingers on each hand, the copper tape on the thumbs would receive the current whenever a finger was pressed to the thumb. The FPGA would read the current from the thumb and relay that information to the microcontroller, which would determine which note should be played based on the fingers that were being pressed. By moving the "bow" hand, an accelerometer would trigger, and that note would play from a speaker.

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In short, the left hand acted as the "neck" hand, whereas the right hand would select the specific string and also act as the "bow" hand. This allowed us to play the entire range of a violin in first position. ​

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A demonstration is shown on the left.​