PedalPlanner

As a fun side project, I decided to build a website that allows you to plan out your guitar/bass pedal board.

 

The biggest challenge I faced while building the site was handling power supplies with outputs that provide different voltages and currents. Some power supplies even have outputs that can switch between multiple voltages using a physical switch, adding another layer of complexity to my database structure.

 

My function calculates the suitable power supplies like this:

1. Extract the different voltages from the selected pedals.
2. Group pedals by voltage.
3. Sort pedals within voltage group from lowest to highest current.
4. Iterate over all power supplies to filter them.
5. Label every output with a counter that keeps track of how many times the output has been used.
6. Assign pedals to the lowest available current output that meets their needs.
7. If a power supply can successfully power all selected pedals, it is marked as a suitable option.

 

Beyond power management, I also focused on making the site visually appealing and user-friendly. Pedals can be dragged and arranged freely on the board and you can zoom in, zoom out and pan the view. After spending a lot of time making the pedal canvas work with touch input, I was even able to make it usable on mobile.