Inspiration
We wanted to hack on hardware to teach people in some way, particularly the Myo for motion detection. As we are all orchestral musicians, we gravitated toward this idea because we all related to being novice student conductors, and we know it's really hard. ):
What it does
TrainConductor allows users to set a tempo and test their skills with keeping time accurately. Users first pair their Myo armbands with their computers and then try to conduct consistently according to their chosen tempo. They can see real-time feedback and view a graphical post-analysis.
How we built it
We used a Myo armband to track the characteristic arm gestures (angular velocity, acceleration, etc.) of an orchestra conductor, the Myo.js framework to communicate between client and server, HTML/CSS/JavaScript for the front end, Node.js to run the server, and AWS Elastic Beanstalk for deployment.
Challenges we ran into
We ran into some issues with the Myo's high sensitivity and determining the best way to tell whether someone has made the proper motion to create a beat. It follows that we also had issues with timing and aligning it properly with the user's intent.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
It was our first time working with hardware, and we made good use of our talents across the team, with interesting problems including a physics component, a web programming component, and a visual design component.
What we learned
Hardware is prone to a lot of errors that software isn't, just because it has more ways to fail and fewer ways to decipher the error messages. We learned about networking concepts by overcoming a major step: successfully deploying the Myo event listeners to an AWS server instance and allowing the client to communicate with the server via his/her own Myo.
What's next for TrainConductor
We want to work more with simulating real-world situations with TrainConductor. On the drawing board for now include plans to sync pre-recorded videos of performances with the metronome and analyze the conductor's accuracy according to the video, and possibly speeding up/slowing down videos for conductors to experiment easily with their own style and nuances without spending valuable rehearsal time. Additionally, a valuable feature would be mobile compatibility for Myo Connect so that TrainConductor could be used on the conductor's phone during actual performances.
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