This week, we primarily focused on finishing our proposal slides. We made sure to get them done in advance so our TA, Ankit, would be able to give us feedback on our schedule and our parts. In class, we listened to the different presentations and gave feedback. It was helpful to see all the presentations in our section, since most of them also related to signal processing, and it gave us inspiration on how we might approach handling our signals from the flute.
During the presentation, Ankit gave us some insightful feedback on whether we should continue using hardware for the signal processing, which would entail using a microcontroller and possibly an op amp, or move to entirely software. It is true that most likely using solely software would help with the real time aspect of the project, but I’m not entirely sure how this would end up translating for the rhythm detection, which I am tasked with. Originally, our plan was to include a blinking light on a physical device/hardware and that would allow people to maintain a steady bpm (essentially providing a metronome). With moving to software, we could implement a similar feature on the web application but I’m not sure how accurately we would be able to detect rhythm since our original plan was to time it with how long it would take to send to the web app via serial. I would definitely need to do some more research on how to record and detect rhythm.
Our plan from here on out is to divide into our scheduled task as we are currently on schedule, with Shivi and I primarily working on the signal processing side of the project and Deeya doing research and beginning to work on the web app. Our first next step would be reaching out to Ankit, or any other specialist TA in signal processing, to ask which would work best for us in terms of hardware vs software.
Looking forward, I hope to have a solid game plan and have implemented the bare bones of the rhythm detection for the signal processing and work on integrating this information with Shivi to put into our midi file within the next two weeks. Furthermore, we hope to meet with some flutists from CFA and get their feedback on how they would like the website to look and how they would like the machine to function.