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A take-home intelligent instrument kit

Design a robust, low-cost intelligent instrument that musicians can take home and use without help.

Level: Summer research, Honours, Masters
Prerequisites: Basic electronics and some experience with Raspberry Pi or Arduino. Interest in physical design and 3D printing or laser cutting.

To study intelligent instruments outside the lab, we need hardware that a musician can take home, plug in, and use without help. In this project you’ll design a robust, low-cost kit around a Raspberry Pi running IMPSY: an enclosure, a simple interface for switching modes and starting retraining, status feedback (e.g., LEDs or a small display), and clear setup documentation. You’ll build a small batch of kits and test them with musicians.

As a summer project, this runs from December to February so the kits are ready for the multi-week study in Semester 1, and the study’s onboarding sessions serve as your usability testing.

• Summer or one semester: an open hardware design with a bill of materials, a batch of five or more working kits, and setup testing.
• Two semesters or Master: add design iterations based on how musicians use the kits at home.

Tags: #hardware #physical-computing #raspberry-pi #IMPSY

How to apply

Contact Charles Martin with your CV, your unofficial transcript (if you are an ANU student), and a brief statement (200 words) explaining how you would approach this project. Before applying, read the Join page and our project expectations.