Guitar tuner

GStreamer is GNOME's multimedia framework — you can use it for playing, recording, and processing video, audio, webcam streams and the like. Here, we'll be using it to produce single-frequency tones.

Conceptually, GStreamer works as follows: You create a pipeline containing several processing elements going from the source to the sink (output). The source can be an image file, a video, or a music file, for example, and the output could be a widget or the soundcard.

Between source and sink, you can apply various filters and converters to handle effects, format conversions and so on. Each element of the pipeline has properties which can be used to change its behaviour.

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  #!/usr/bin/gjs

This line tells how to run the script. It needs to be the first line of the code and it needs to be executable. To get the execution rights go to terminal and run in right folder: chmod +x scriptname. Or you can use the graphical filemanager. Just go to the right folder where your code is, right click you code file, choose properties, click the permissions tab and check the box for allow executing file as a program

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var Gtk = imports.gi.Gtk;
var Gst = imports.gi.Gst;

const Mainloop = imports.mainloop;

In order to have a working program we need to import a few GObject Introspection -libraries to our use. For working UI, we need Gtk and for Gstreamer to work we need Gst. These are imported in the beginning so we have them at use everywhere. Also in the beginning we import a construct Mainloop to handle the timeout to be used with the tuning sounds.

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Gtk.init(null, 0);
Gst.init(null, 0);

var guitarwindow = new Gtk.Window({type: Gtk.WindowType.TOPLEVEL, border_width: 100});
guitarwindow.title = "Guitar Tuner";
guitarwindow.connect("destroy", function(){Gtk.main_quit()});

guitarwindow.show();
Gtk.main();

Importing Gtk and Gst is not enough, we need to initialize them in order to get them working. When Gtk and Gst are up and running we need to create the window for the application. Later we are going to put all the buttons for making sounds inside this window. In order to get the window showing, we need to tell it to show and we need also to run the code with the Gtk.main()

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var guitar_box = new Gtk.ButtonBox ({orientation: Gtk.Orientation.VERTICAL, spacing: 10});

var E = new Gtk.Button({label: "E"});
var A = new Gtk.Button({label: "A"});
var D = new Gtk.Button({label: "D"});
var G = new Gtk.Button({label: "G"});
var B = new Gtk.Button({label: "B"});
var e = new Gtk.Button({label: "e"});

guitar_box.add(E);
guitar_box.add(A);
guitar_box.add(D);
guitar_box.add(G);
guitar_box.add(B);
guitar_box.add(e);

guitarwindow.add(guitar_box);

guitar_box.show_all();

Because Gtk.Window can only contain a single widget, we need to create something under it to be able to add all the necessary buttons inside it. In this example we use Buttonbox. After creating the Buttonbox we create buttons with necessary labels. After we have the buttons we need to add them to the Buttonbox and the Buttonbox must be added to the Gtk.Window and everything in the Buttonbox must be shown.

After this stage you should have a window appearing to your screen showing 6 buttons. Right now the buttons don't do anything and we shall address that issue later. Before we can connect the button signals to something we need to code that something first.

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var frequencies = {E: 329.63, A: 440,	D: 587.33,	G: 783.99,	B: 987.77,	e: 1318.5}

function playSound(frequency){
  var pipeline = new Gst.Pipeline({name: "note"});
  var source = Gst.ElementFactory.make("audiotestsrc","source");
  var sink = Gst.ElementFactory.make("autoaudiosink","output");

  source.set_property('freq', frequency);
  pipeline.add(source);
  pipeline.add(sink);
  source.link(sink);
  pipeline.set_state(Gst.State.PLAYING);

  Mainloop.timeout_add(500, function () {
    pipeline.set_state(Gst.State.NULL);
	  return false;
  });
}

The first thing we need to do is decide what tunes we want to make when we push a button. The frequencies list takes care of that. After that we get to actually making the sounds with the function playSound. For function playSound we give as an input a frequency (that we just defined in the frequencies variable). First thing we need to construct is a pipeline, a source and a sink. For the source we set the frequency. To the pipeline we add both the source and the sink and then we tell it to keep playing. As a last thing we use the const Mainloop to get the pipeline to stop after a 500ms.

Now we have the method of playing a tune when clicking a button. Next well make the connections between pushing a button and playing the correct sound from that button.

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E.connect("clicked", function() {
  playSound(frequencies.E);
});
A.connect("clicked", function(){
  playSound(frequencies.A);
});
D.connect("clicked", function(){
  playSound(frequencies.D);
});
G.connect("clicked", function(){
  playSound(frequencies.G);
});
B.connect("clicked", function(){
  playSound(frequencies.B);
});
e.connect("clicked", function(){
  playSound(frequencies.e);
});

The method of connecting button clicks to playSound with the correct tune is by using the connect method of the button widget. So we choose a button to be connected and type E.connect("clicked", function(){playSound(frequencies.E);}); The connect tells that when pushing E, something should happen. The clicked tells the type of the signal happening to E and then in the function(){}; we call playSound with the correct note that should be associated with the button.

So this is what all the parts combined looks like. When running this code, you should be able to tune your guitar (if you have correctly calibrated speakers).

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#!/usr/bin/gjs
var Gtk = imports.gi.Gtk;
var Gst = imports.gi.Gst;

const Mainloop = imports.mainloop;

Gtk.init(null, 0);
Gst.init(null, 0);

var guitarwindow = new Gtk.Window({type: Gtk.WindowType.TOPLEVEL, border_width: 100});
guitarwindow.title = "Guitar Tuner";
guitarwindow.connect("destroy", function(){Gtk.main_quit()});

var guitar_box = new Gtk.ButtonBox ({orientation: Gtk.Orientation.VERTICAL, spacing: 10});

var E = new Gtk.Button({label: "E"});
var A = new Gtk.Button({label: "A"});
var D = new Gtk.Button({label: "D"});
var G = new Gtk.Button({label: "G"});
var B = new Gtk.Button({label: "B"});
var e = new Gtk.Button({label: "e"});

var frequencies = {E: 329.63, A: 440,	D: 587.33,	G: 783.99,	B: 987.77,	e: 1318.5}


function playSound(frequency){
  var pipeline = new Gst.Pipeline({name: "note"});

  var source = Gst.ElementFactory.make("audiotestsrc","source");
  var sink = Gst.ElementFactory.make("autoaudiosink","output");

  source.set_property('freq', frequency);
  pipeline.add(source);
  pipeline.add(sink);
  source.link(sink);
  pipeline.set_state(Gst.State.PLAYING);

  Mainloop.timeout_add(500, function () {
    pipeline.set_state(Gst.State.NULL);
	  return false;
});
}

E.connect("clicked", function() {
  playSound(frequencies.E);
});
A.connect("clicked", function(){
  playSound(frequencies.A);
});
D.connect("clicked", function(){
  playSound(frequencies.D);
});
G.connect("clicked", function(){
  playSound(frequencies.G);
});
B.connect("clicked", function(){
  playSound(frequencies.B);
});
e.connect("clicked", function(){
  playSound(frequencies.e);
});

guitar_box.add(E);
guitar_box.add(A);
guitar_box.add(D);
guitar_box.add(G);
guitar_box.add(B);
guitar_box.add(e);

guitarwindow.add(guitar_box);

guitar_box.show_all();
guitarwindow.show();
Gtk.main();

To run this application open Terminal, go to the folder where your application is stored and then run

 $  GJS_PATH=`pwd` gjs guitarTuner.js 

If you run into problems with the tutorial, compare your code with this reference code.