Good question and the answer to the second part is that the big names do have products that will convert audio signals from an electric violin that has the right kind of (expensive) pickup and then do the audio to MIDI conversion. Well, yes they certainly do (but have you ever seen anybody use one?). That audio analysis takes the latency (milliseconds) from the time a player's bow touches the string to a level that is quite noticeable to the player.
There you have it...from a Human Factors/Ergonomics perspective, their systems don't work. Once your latency reaches anything over 10 or so milliseconds, it's not a usable system.
What we are building uses sensors on the instrument itself to generate the necessary MIDI codes. We are working towards 5 second or less TOTAL latency. Once our system is functional, we shall know whether we have achieved that goal (but we have some really good Ph.D. level Electrical Engineers on this issue and believe that we will meet our goal), we will be able to say that ours works and theirs doesn't. We'll see how it turns out.
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