As I started working on my Arduino Rock Band Player, I originally attempted to read the screen and watch the notes as they scrolled down the screen. It was an interesting project that let me attempt my hand at scaling, cutting, creating histograms, and other computer vision techniques. This also let me try my hand at learning and using C#. I only worked on it for a week, but it was still fun and taught me a lot about the trouble software engineers go through as they try to watch the world and make some sense from it. This project seemed simple to me, notes moving on a static background. However, to my dismay, I learned it wasn’t as static as I thought. Hammer on notes are smaller and are basically right on top of each other, which are registered as one note. Star power shoots lightning throughout the screen that can cause issues as well.

I had some ideas such as tracking the notes, and doing closer monitoring, but I scrapped this project in favor of reading the MIDI file directly from the disk. (I’ll post that project later on. I’ll add a link when I do.)

If you want to see the code, it’s posted on github. It uses the aForge.net computer vision libraries.

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Filed under: Projects,Software - @ July 15, 2012 6:17 pm

Tags: code, Computer Vision, Rhythm Reader, Rock Band