OpenChord.org’s goal is to make playing guitar-based video games a deeper and more fulfilling experience. The idea is simple: instead of playing these games and getting really good at pressing plastic buttons, why not build something that lets you use a real guitar?

Our flagship project is the OpenChord V1 guitar. The V1 is an electric guitar that can be plugged into a variety of consoles and allows you to play guitar games in a variety of modes: * Fret Mode - Using the first 5 frets as buttons, the V1 makes an electric guitar emulate a standard guitar controller * Note Mode - You can also map the buttons in a guitar game to individual notes on the guitar, allowing you to practice fingering different notes * Chord Mode - The V1 also lets you map chords to buttons, allowing you to use guitar games to practice chords and chord transitions.

Currently, the V1 is a project that is built into the body of an existing guitar; however, we're working hard on a version that can be attached directly to the neck of the guitar.

The actual construction of the guitar is somewhat documented over on Instructables, but is a little out of date. However, the general idea is there, the primary difference is that since the controller-guitar communication is now handled internally, the steps where the microcontroller is plugged into another controller are no longer valid, and so the guitar maintains all of its original hardware. We'll hopefully have a better set of instructions up soon...

Instructions, and schematics can be downloaded from the download page, and can also be accessed from the SVN repository, along with the rest of the code.

Interested in developing? Give us a shout at develop@openchord.org, and we'll see what we can do about getting you on the commit list!