Setback!  It’s for the best that we figured it out now, but in order to actually sell a product, at least in the US, we’re going to need to get FCC approval, it looks like, since our guitar has a chip that’s going fast enough to generate possible interference.  It shouldn’t be hard, but it does mean that we should probably do a little more development, just to make sure that our circuit board is as good as it should be.

However, kits don’t have that restriction, and so while we’re still working on some play testing, we should have kits ready to go once some new parts show up!  With the kits, we’re also looking at increasing the device’s flexibility and making it programmable via USB.  Things to look forward to in the New Year!

USB Bootloading!  This week, I’ve been working on (well, working on getting it to compile) a USB bootloader for the chip we’re using.  What does this mean?  It means that instead of having to buy a $40 programmer to update the firmware on the chip, firmware updates can now also be handled via USB, something that is super-nice.   This means that we can keep upgrading the guitar and adding new features, and  you simply (well, right now, unfortunately slightly less simply) have to download the new code and install it on your device.  This also means that we’re probably going to be able to offer kits really soon, since we can continually update the firmware as time goes on.

So it’s been a while, huh.   This time, I was moving to Australia…

Also in the last couple of weeks, we finally got a PlayStation 3 to do some testing on, and it doesn’t work.  That is to say, it didn’t work.  We’ve figured out what was going wrong, and now I’m happy to report that the OpenChord.org codebase is now compatible with the PlayStation 3!  I’ve only tested it out so far on Guitar Hero 5, but it should work with any Guitar Hero or Rock Band games.

Also, we’re still working on the clip-on version – that’s what we’re doing our usage testing on right now.  (I’ll let you know when I’m getting 5 stars on Expert mode…) We’re trying to get things figured out playability and electromechanically still, so it doesn’t break midway through your songs, and we still need to find a good case.  But we’re also looking for a name!  Check out the poll on the left, and if you have some better ideas, let us know in the comments!