[sdiy] senior project ideas?

[Bob Weigel]

In a physics electronics class I designed a 'position sensor' using mics 
on a piece of wood where you could tap it and get a 4 bit readout of the 
position.  I was thinking of building some position tracking drum 
heads.  Then like so many things..right after I saw products emerging 
that did that.  Use your imagination.  I'm sure something will come up.  
Think about something you'd like a product to do and then..watch to see 
if the prof winds up with his name on the patent. :-)-Bob

Ryan Williams wrote:

> 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
>
>