To illustrate how stressful the timeline was, let me describe the situtation. We're all seniors in Electrical and Computer Engineering. When the project was being done, I was taking 6 courses, all 500 and 600 courses except for 1 lab (that was equally stressful). Adam was taking 5 courses, about the same situation. Soeryanto finally joined us about February 99, which prove to be very absolutly awesomely useful to the project (it wont be finished if this guy didnt show up). And another important thing to note: we did not receive any college credits for this project. That made our lives as miserable as it could be that semester. "I" will refer to the webpage maker, "Franciscus Handiono"

Late October 1998
Engineering Expo issued a formal invitation to Engineering students to participate. All 3 of us were enrolled in ECE 353, an introduction to embedded system course. (starting from this point until February 99 point, terms "we" refers to "Franciscus Handiono and Adam Adjiwibawa").

Mid November 1998
I was talking to Adam if he wants to join me for Expo project. He agreed.

December 15, 1998
We agreed to find the specs for following possibilities:
a. Robot arms
b. Sensors of any kind
c. Controller for household applications

December 22, 1998
Robot arms was crossed out due to insufficient knowledge. Controller for household apps was crossed out too due to the "boring level" it might induce in the expo. After arguing a while, decision was: use a light sensor. Adam was interning at National Instruments (NI) previous summer term, and he saw "Laser Harp" and proposed the idea to me. I, having done some experiments on MIDI programming, agreed to it. Enrollment to expo was submitted to the committee.

December 27, 1998
Designing basic block diagram for the device, simple sensor design, basic specs, and asking permission to NI (which was granted right away). To avoid copyright infringement, we decided to alter the "Harp" into "Guitar". At the time, the design was "Infra Red Guitar".

January 15, 1999
Spring term started. Due to heavy load of courses, project was suspended.

January 25, 1999
Adam reported that using IR will not work (the beam dispersed way too much). Design was changed to "Laser Guitar". I reported some problem on interfacing parallel port in Windows NT computer. It was decided that we must have Windows 9x machine to run this without programming NT kernel driver (which we wouldnt be able to install in school's computer anyway).

February 2, 1999
I bought Celeron 400 motherboard + 6.5 GB HD. Alas, the motherboard was for AT and the case I had was ATX. At this time, Soeryanto joined us and I requested his old computer for the parts. He gave me the computer but again, it's incompatible. I also requested permission from Prof. Ramanathan to bring the computer to the lab because we need the scope and power supply.

February 8, 1999
Got the AT case, and successfully tried the interface on the computer with my test circuit. Prof. Ramanathan gave a green light, but again, there was a TA on that lab who objected the plea. We decided that for the software to work I had to work from home, while Adam and Soer could still use the lab and equipments there.

February 12, 1999
Adam finished his sensor design, while Soer was trying to buy a cheap guitar to mess around with. Bad news, I discovered that we can't use 9 bits of parallel port because some bits are unpredictable under certain circumstances. Only 5 bits were stable. We decided to use 4 bits data and 1 bit strobe. Adam redesigned the fret using push buttons and priority encoder to fit all datas in 4 bits.

Mid - Late March 1999
We were working seperately, I was trying to decide if I want to use DirectX or just plain MIDI API call to play the sound, and thinking of recording / playback scheme. Adam and Soer were trying to do their physical design on the guitar.

April 2, 1999
My program was 80% functional, my interface HW is 100% functional. So the HW team work was at least 70% functional too. We got the guitar all wired, although the decoder card is still 50%. After we agreed on how to use the 5 bits of the interface, my interface design was incorporated to decoder card.

April 8, 1999
We got everything tested seperately. That's the problem. When we got the software and the hardware run together, it didnt work. Then we figured out that we were using buffer chip with TTL technology, which input voltage was not compatible with the rest of circuit (CMOS).

April 9, 1999
PANIC !!! The chip manufacturer said they were out of stock for that particular IC. They said there might be one sample chip left but they gotta look for it. We started to think to redesign the device so it wont use buffering at all. I was off to Detroit to attend my sister's wedding the next day (while trying to find the chip there too), and Adam and Soer were trying to salvage whatever CMOS buffer chip they could find in Madison Area.

April 12, 1999
The chip arrived! Whew! We tried it and IT WORKED!!! Halleluja! Soer rented a smoke generator (to show the laser path) but decided not to use it because the smoke were way too thick. Then he was looking for some dried ice scheme.

April 13 - 15, 1999
Adam was working on his 555 project, Soer was doing his 555 project while trying to find a DJ store that had a smoke generateor rental, and I kept testing and trying some final modification on the programs (while trying to stay on my 638 project). And some minor bugs showed up on the guitar: if the alignment was off even by a little bit the whole circuit wouldn't work at all.

April 16, 1999
The first day of Expo started at 9:00. Dried ice didnt produce as much smoke as we wanted, so we abandoned the scheme. We still got overwhelming responses, especially from kids. This is primarily the first day is the K-12 visit day. The first 4 members of jury inspected our exhibit.

April 17, 1999
WISC TV3 and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter mentioned us in their show / article. The second 4 members of jury inspected our exhibit. At the end of expo hour, the alignment is off a bit because of the overwhelming number of people trying the guitar. We fixed it afterward though.

April 18, 1999
We opened a little late due to exhaustion of standing almost 8 hours non stop for 2 days. We were awarded second place by the Expo Committee. Victory at last.... We went home joyfully.