Vibrating Metronome

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  UI of the vibrating metronome on simulator

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  Icon of the vibrating metronome

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  UI on the FitBit smart watch

Inspiration

Traditional metronome for instrument practice relies on the audio feedback, which seriously distracts performers, especially for beginners. So, can we let the performers feel the beats rather than hear the beats? Haptic feedback is an excellent alternative. For the impulse signals such as beats, humans are even more sensitive to the touch than the audio. This is the biggest reason that I want to create a vibrating metronome via a smart watch which is equipped with the haptic API.

What it does

It provides the haptic feedback to instrument performers in terms of the correct beats so that they will not be distracted by the extra sound from the traditional metronome. It can help performers improve faster during the practice and get stable performance during the live show.

How I built it

I utilized the Haptic API in FitBit SDK as the base of the implementation. Based on the Haptic API, I added time control for generating different beats and also created the Minimalist user interface for the smart watch.

Challenges I ran into

Very unfortunately, all my teammates left me during the first day...I had to handle everything by myself, since I don't want to waste my first hackathon. Though it was a huge challenge for me due to the time constraint, I found it was actually quite fun and I really enjoyed my first hackathon.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

As a guitarist, I love my vibrating metronome!

What I learned

I learned how to develop a simple app for smart watch and more importantly I learned how to find useful ideas from my daily life (guitar practice).

What's next for Vibrating metronome

In the future, instead of setting the numerical beats manually, I plan to add the mode of automatically detecting the beats from the external tapping on the watch.

Built With

• fitbit
• haptic
• javascript