Piano Apprentice

• Team basics

  Project title

  Piano Apprentice

  name of your team

  WE MADE IT THIS FAR

  URL to your team's project page on the EECS-CSE Senior Projects site (from #2 above).

  http://srproj.eecs.uci.edu/projects/piano-apprentice

   

  Team composition

  Members

  Jae Hwan Yi: Senior - Electrical Engineering, Electronic Circuit Design

• • • • Skilled in circuit design and hardware assembly

      • Contributions to circuit design and assembly

      • Role of hardware engineer and network administrator

Team information

We have a very good project that takes into account of all the knowledge and practice we have learned and used throughout our undergraduate experience. This convinced our mentor to take this project.

Mentor

Professor Glenn Healey

Explain how you found this mentor and why you chose him or her.  What made you think this mentor is a good match?  In what ways do you expect this mentor to be helpful?

Professor Healey is a renowned and respected instructor amongst all EE students and faculty. After witnessing his skill and desire to help students by asking questions of them and giving them precise information we decided that he would be the right fit. He will allow us to fix issues on our own and provide key information along the way.

List the other faculty you have talked to but why they didn’t work out. Did they turn you down or did you turn them down, and why? Explain how you approached them (in person, by email, by phone, what dates, etc.), and comment on how hard (or how aggressive) you tried contacting them, what worked and what didn't work.

We approached Professor Bachman and Professor Doemer in the beginning along with Professor Healey. Professor Bachman was looking for a group that would be willing to work in his field. We at First Group, feel strongly about our own project and desire to see it through so we regretfully turned down his suggestion. Professor Doemer required comparing proposals before making his decision. Soon after being told this, professor Healey agreed to take First Group under his mentorship, which we were more than glad to accept.

Project idea

What is the project idea? You might not have all the details all worked out yet, but try your best to give the most plausible description of the project you'll end up doing.

We are interested in developing a piano instruction system. Our system will approach this by showing the student the keys he/she will need to press in real time in order to play the tune properly. In addition to this, our system will recognize a melody once it is played and automatically begin showing the future notes. Furthermore, the program should be able to match the pace of the learners or set an ambitious target pace.

How did this idea come up?  Defined by students? faculty? design contest? other sources?

The idea came about when one of our team members, Michael, was remembering the difficulty he had with learning the piano growing up. He wanted to design a system to make it easier on future students

Why do you think this is a good project idea?  Has anyone else done something like it?  If so, what do you plan to do differently and better

Piano Apprentice will be a cost effective way for beginners to get started learning the piano without the need of an instructor. As far as we have seen, an integrated tutorial system utilizing using LEDs on the keyboard has not been done before.

Comment on whether your team has the sufficient expertise and what skills you will need to acquire to do the project.  Who will work on which aspects?  Is there any skill not covered by the team?  What do you plan to do?

The team has a variety of experiences from many different backgrounds  that has us well equipped to tackle this project. Miguel and Matt are our software specialist, while Michael and Kyle are the hardware experts. Everyone on the team is at least relatively well studied in all the aspects that this project will require, so there are no skills we are missing.

Comment on the multidisciplinary aspects of the project. Does the project require multidisciplinary technical skills within the team?  Or does it require your team to interact with some other people from a different discipline?

This is a comprehensive electrical engineering project that tests the team’s ability to manage and navigate a multidisciplinary design. This project covers circuit design, software development, aspects of business, and the development of professional relationships.

Miguel Larios: Senior - Electrical Engineering, Digital Signal and Processing

• • • Skilled in programming, embedded systems and hardware assembly

    • Contributions to programming and hardware assembly

    • Role of software engineer and team captain

Matt Casper: Senior - Electrical Engineering, Semiconductors & Optoelectronics/Electronic Circuit Design

• • • Skilled in circuit design, programming and physical and hardware design

    • Contributions to programming and hardware design

    • Role of software engineer

Kyle Ferreira: Senior - Electrical Engineering, Semiconductors & Optoelectronics/Electronic Circuit Design

• • • Skilled in circuit design, math and programming

    • Contributions to circuit design and programming

    • Role of hardware engineer