Cool Tunes is a temperature regulating guitar case. Its goal is to aid in keeping a guitar in a safer temperature range. For instance, personally, when I play the guitar for church or at school, I have to leave my guitar in the car. The inside of a car can get really hot and the heat could warp/damage the guitar beyond repair. Cool Tunes is the solution to this problem.

Cool Tunes currently works by using the Arduino microcontroller. A thermistor is used to read heat inside of the case, which is then converted to a temperature reading. Based upon the temperature, two peltier devices attached onto heatsinks are used with a fan and vent to either add cool air in and take hot air out when the system is too hot, or vise-versa if the system is too cold. An LCD screen displays the current temperature, an upper and lower control limit, and if the fan and vent are on/off. This is all powered by a 12V 7Ah rechargeable battery. A 4x4 matrix keypad is implemented to where you can set the upper and lower control limits. By using these limits, our system tries to correct the system to the midpoint if for some reason the temperature inside the case either exceeds the upper control limit or falls below the lower control limit. This ensures that the instrument will be at a safe temperature.
Manufacturing the whole case takes roughly $313 without the cost of labor. There are currently 25 parts incorporated into Cool Tunes including the wiring and such. The main costly parts of this is the Arduino for $30 from Robotshop.com, the LCD for $40 from Parallax.com, the case itself for $45 from Guitar Center, and the battery for $36 from Radioshack, all of which can be modified to vary the price.

This technology we are putting into this guitar case can even be used towards other types of cases from a broad range of instrumental cases to even tennis racket cases. This gives the marketability of this product a broad range of people ranging from musicians of all kinds to even athletes. A regular hard guitar case could range from $50-100 or more, while a guitar itself can cost up to $1000 or more. Looking at it like this, paying $200-$300 more for a guitar case that can protect your instrument is a great investment.

Some renovations we have thought to make is to add a dehumidifier, a car alternator to help charge the battery, maybe taking out the LCD and keypad to where it is by default set to a safe temperature range, and changing the heating/cooling system. It is currently an external type system, but we would incorporate a thin metal sheet that would run around the inside of the case and attach the peltier devices straight onto the case to have a more efficient heating/cooling system where the system would be built into the case, not just an external box.