About the project

I am a synthesizer and music technology enthusiast. For the final project of my first electronics class at university, I wanted to make some kind of Theremin-like instrument. With the knowledge I already had about RC oscillators and amplifiers, I was able to convince my partner to take this challenge on. At that time we didn't have the knowledge and experience of how antennas and heterodyne systems work, so we decided to use photoresistors as the human interface for our instrument as that would provide the necessary voltage control for the oscillator and amplifier subsystems. However, we ran into a problem of inconsistent ambient lighting affecting the frequency and volume range. So, we added LED wands as a means to interact with the photoresistors to minimize the effects of the ambient lighting. After our presentation, our professor invited us to participate in the ECE 110 Showcase to demonstrate our project to fellow faculty members and other students.

Documentation

This is the poster we designed for the ECE 110 Showcase demonstration. This describes our motivation for the project as well as some analysis of the components we used.

Here is the report going into more detail about the project, our processes, schematic and component analysis.