[sdiy] senior project ideas?

[Ryan Williams]

hi all,

I'm about to start the first of two senior lab projects in EE. I just 
found out that I'll have a say in what I do for these projects. 
Naturally, I'd like it to be something synth related. I'm asking if 
anyone has any neat ideas on projects. I have a few weeks to come up 
with a proposal, then find a professor who would approve such a project. 
The topics of analog or digital electronics should be fine. A digital 
project would probably be some type of FPGA design.  This first project 
will happen during the summer, I'll only have 8 weeks to do it, so it 
should not be too complex.

One of the few ideas I have is: An autotunning VCO bank for polyphonic 
modular synths.  This would have an autotunning circuit that will tune 
and scale several VCOs on startup or on command (a button or something). 
This would be a four voice, probably 8 or 12 VCOs in total. I probably 
wouldn't build them all, but atleast verify the design on a few of them.

I have other ideas for synth projects, but most of them would be much 
too involved for an 8 week project. I also don't want to do something 
that has been done many times before. I wouldn't want to do a complete 
analog monosynth, but then a polysynth would be too large a project to 
complete.  I know people in the past have done things like: a 
delta-sigma modulator.

-Ryan Williams