Trolley

Our group will design a guitar pedal that will be modifiable to the likeness of the consumer. We want the consumer to be able to understand the different parts of our product and be able to use it in the exact way they want without having to buy a different device just to have a slightly different sound.  

To best play across many genres, musicians manipulate the sound of their instruments with effects. Specific sound effects are contrived from a combination of basic circuit configurations and sealed into an enclosure with a trigger button, making a “stompbox” or guitar pedal. Guitar players achieve comprehensive effect ranges by purchasing a variety of stompboxes and daisy chaining them together with patch cables, a bulky configuration that is prone to damage, especially for traveling musicians. Trolley houses multiple classic pedal circuit configurations in a modular digital system. A network of switches allows for internal transposition and compounding of these circuits, so the signal remains analog through processing. To begin, the user can design their desired sound through Trolley’s intuitive graphical user interface. These choices are communicated to the board wirelessly; the system will direct the guitar signal’s path through the desired components and manipulate applicable in-circuit values. Trolley gives musicians more agency over their desired sound and thus, the components used in their devices. This allows for a better understanding of the underlying circuitry while crafting a sound.