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Air Guitar That Actually Plays!

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the way-more-than-the-3-chords-i-know dept.

An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist has a nice feature of a real air guitar developed by a three students at the Helsinki University of Technology. In a nutshell it is a Linux PC with a sound card and webcam."

17 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. Don't even comment... by dada21 · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...on anyone who made a skin flute that actually works. At least no one from /.

  2. Dude! by Somethingsomethingw · · Score: 5, Funny

    Most excellent!

    air guitar

  3. Missing the point by amliebsch · · Score: 5, Funny

    The real story here is that they got a Webcam AND a sound card working under Linux...on the same box.

    --
    If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
    1. Re:Missing the point by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Informative

      http://airguitar.tml.hut.fi.nyud.net:8090/tech.htm l

      The real story is:
      you + webcam input + gesture recognition + musical interpretation + physical sound model = rock'n'roll!

      I'm not even going to try and give you the Soviet Russian version of that.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    2. Re:Missing the point by mwilli · · Score: 4, Funny

      In Soviet Russia, air guitar plays you!
      *ducks*

      --
      My sig beat up your sig.
    3. Re:Missing the point by Articuno · · Score: 4, Funny

      Can I ? Can I ? :-)
      In Soviet Russia, rock'n'roll! - (webcam input + gesture recognition + musical interpretation + physical sound model) = you !

      --
      So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!
  4. Next... by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 5, Funny

    Next, an imaginary audience that actually applauds.

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  5. Slightly easier to build... by Darius+Jedburgh · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...I just built myself a theremin based partly on this. It transmits a pair of RF signals at around 1MHz. As you move your hand around it varies the inductance of the coils so that the coils transmit at slightly different frequencies. As a result you get a signal at the average of the two frequencies modulated by the beat frequency. Tune an AM receiver to the average frequency and you get to listen to just the beats. It took a couple of hours to build. (The project I linked to above has an AM receiver built into the circuit but I didn't bother with that as I already had a spare radio.)

  6. Wyld Stallyans Rule! by Viper+Daimao · · Score: 4, Funny

    Excellent! Finally we can get to cleaning up air polution with our air guitar playing, and usher in a new Utopia.

    Party on Bill!
    Party on Ted!

    --
    "In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
  7. Mismatch by The_reformant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why does strumming frantically produce hammer-ons? If im using hammer-ons and pull offs i have to strum less not more.

    To be honest in the hands of novices you could just play a random pre-recorded solo and they probably wouldnt know the difference and in the hands of someone who can play....why???

    --
    I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this post is too small to contain.
  8. Wow, a general purpose operating system! by mumblestheclown · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Yet again we see a slashdot article that mentions something neat that people did with a PC with a general purpose operating system. Does the operating system matter or is the choice of OS even interesting? Probably not more than and possibly much less than the programming language that the thing was written in.. but does that get mentioned?

    Face it, folks. Linux is a general purpose operating system on which you can do all of the expected things that one can do with such. We are WELL past the time where you can do basic things, like program and use webcams, on Linux, and nobody reading slashdot really needs to be fluffed further in this respect.

    As far as this story goes, unless the inventors did something that could more or less only have been done on linux, then the linux aspect of this story is irrelevant.

  9. In a nutshell... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    In a nutshell it is a Linux PC with a sound card and webcam.
    A Linux PC in a nutshell? Brilliant!
  10. Perfect... by JonN · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...now all I need is an air mic for the shower and I can start my album

    --
    do.what.promptcmds
  11. Great! by waif69 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now I won't just look stupid, I'll sound stupid too!

  12. "Virtual" Air Guitar Project by cbreaker · · Score: 4, Funny

    Versus.. you know. The real air guitar.

    --
    - It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
  13. For the french readers by DrYak · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And in tomorrow news :
    Jean-Michel Jarre is claiming prior art...

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  14. Re:It still sounds like schitt by Wuukie · · Score: 4, Funny

    You just don't get it, do you?