So we’re starting to have some orders rolling in – Thanks to everyone who has bought a kit! Unfortunately, we just realized that the Wii connectors we’re using weren’t priced into the equation, so we’ve had to change the price on the original kit. If you already bought a kit, though, we did give you Wii connectors. Our mistake is your gain! We’re going to try and get the price down further, but buying Wiimote connectors is tricky. Hopefully we can find a factory somewhere… However, we’ve also added an option to buy the kit in just USB format, in case you’re not interested in playing on the Wii, or you’ve already got a spare Nunchuk or Nunchuk cable lying around, or if you’re willing to rip into a Wiimote and do some crazy hardware modding.

Also, we figured that shipping was going to be pretty straightforward in Australia, since it was pretty straightforward in Japan, but we were wrong. We’re still offering $5 shipping, but if you’re in the US, you won’t be able to get a tracking number, since registered post is $20. If you live in Australia, though, lucky you!

We also got written up a little bit on the MAKE blog! Thanks, MAKE Magazine! We’re trying to take a new video this weekend….

We’ve just finished switching over our web hosting. So far, things seem to be going fine, but be sure to let us know if you find something broken or whatnot.  There’s not much of a change, but with the new host, we’re allowed to have multiple databases, and as a result, we’ve now got space for a forum!  Our old hosting company, NetFirms, was/is actually pretty decent, but it was kind of slow loading our site, so we’re going to try out this host for the next while, and let you know.

The other big advantage (and we could have set it up with NetFirms had we known about it) is we’re now running Google Apps, and by extension, Gmail for all our e-mail, whereas before we were just forwarding all our mail to a Gmail account.  However, I think that we might have been losing some e-mails to spam filters, etc. with that method.. So if you’ve sent us an e-mail and we haven’t responded, we’re terribly sorry, and try resending it now!

We just put up a new set of instructions on building your own on the site – Check them out – They need a little work, a few more pictures and such, but they should give you a good idea of how to proceed if you want to build yourself a guitar controller!

So, I’m headed out to Japan for the next few months, then I’m off to Australia.  However, I’ll still be working on the project while I’m out of the USA.  Still, for the next two weeks, I’ll be on a rural island off the coast of Japan, so communications are going to be kinda spotty.

Still, before I go, I figured I’d give you an update about where things stand -

The Wii version is almost to a point I’d call a solid working version.  Either the chip needs to be upgraded from 8Kb to 16Kb, or I need to optimize the wii communication library, but as it stands, the code and controller work with 3 modes of playing.

I spent this last week trying to get a USB version to work.  And, by all means, it should work… For some reason, the USB communication was going along just fine, and then all the sudden it stopped working right.   However, once I get that sorted out, a Playstation 3 version should be basically ready to go.

Also, while I’ll be out of contact for the next 2 weeks, I’ll be working on documentation and such, since that area is severely lacking…

Finally, and most excitingly, I’ve got ideas for a version that doesn’t need to be built into the guitar, but can be clipped onto it instead.  I’ll have more details and design sketches hopefully when I get back from the island; it was something I was hoping to get done this week, but then the USB stuff just stopped working…

So that’s where things stand.  See you in 2 weeks!

Part of the OpenChord project is a commitment to open source and do-it-yourself hobbyists.  In this light, we’ve always planned on putting together kits to let you easily make your own OpenChord guitars.  As it stands, it seems like we’re in a position where the basic assembly of the guitar has been mostly figured out, leaving most of the updates on the software side of things.  Right now, we’re in a position where we could get a bunch of circuit boards printed out and start packaging them together as kits.  However, when you buy a circuit board, the board itself costs only a dollar or two, but the set-up costs are around a hundred or so.  Therefore, it only makes sense to go and get some boards if there’s enough interest to buy a large order of boards.

So we’re asking you, the person interested in OpenChord, would you like to buy a kit to build your own OpenChord guitar?  Drop us a line in the comments, or e-mail us at buy@openchord.org, and if we get enough interest, we’ll go ahead and get a run printed up!

So here’s another video for the V1… It’s pretty low-quality, but it shows how the V1 sounds when it’s not plugged in, that is to say, it doesn’t make real sounds.  We took this one a few days ago, but thought the other one was better quality.   We also tried to take one tonight, but the sound quality on that clip is amazingly horrible, so we’re not posting that one….

Thanks for watching!

A clarifying note – While we left it plugged in to the amp in this video to demonstrate how it’s both a real guitar and a working controller, if you unplug the guitar, you don’t really hear it, and if the slight sound is still too much, you can just tap the pick against the strings instead of a full strum.  You see that happen in the first few notes that are hit in the video..  Yeah, what an embarrassing mistake!

Anyhow, we’ve got a new video up on the blog, and we’ll try to have a more in-depth video up soon.

We finally got a video taken!  We’re still offering the Beta Version of the V1 for $169; for more information, check out the ‘Buy’ page.

Sorry for the lack of recent updates.. These last 2 weeks have been kinda busy.
First, we’ve been spending a lot of time trying to build a chip to allow us to interface directly with the PlayStation 2, which has gone a lot worse than expected. We’ve had some success; we’ve gotten our chip to work, but unfortunately, it only seems to work with games OTHER than Guitar Hero. Awkward.
Second, and more exciting, we’ve also been working on a simpler-to-make version of the V1, one that’s just a mod of one of those “Guitar Hero Controllers in a Real Guitar Body” things. Still working on a few things, but that should be out soon…
So thanks for bearing with us! We’ve been doing stuff, we swear!

Welcome to OpenChord.org. Our goal is to turn a regular electric guitar into a Guitar Hero/Rock Band controller while retaining as much of the original guitar-playing experience as possible. Right now, we’re probably about halfway to the dream, but what we’ve already got is pretty rockin’. So check out the site, see what we’ve got, and let us know what you think at contact@openchord.org.