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vintageSynt

Electronic musical instruments are fun for Makers. With some cheap tools, know-how and passion, anyone can become a real synth geek. Just ask software developer Liam Lacey, who happens to also be a sound coder and freelance hacker. He recently won element14’s Open Source Music Tech design challenge for his Vintage Toy Synthesizer project — it’s an acoustic wooden toy piano converted into an open-source, standalone polyphonic digital synthesizer running on a BeagleBone Black and an Arduino Pro Mini.

Playing an instrument is about a lot more than just the sound you create – the way you play it; the physical feedback; and the overall feel and aesthetics of the instrument also play a big role in the overall experience, with these elements also helping to nurture inspiration, and can even affect your perception of the sound created.

Lacey developed the voice engine using the C++ audio DSP library Maximilian, and the keyboard mechanism uses homemade pressure sensors made out of Velostat. The instrument has 18 keys, though players able to alter scales using the knobs on top of the mini piano’s lid. Other dials are used to toggle dedicated waveform oscillators, filters and onboard distortion effects, and there’s even vintage parameters for replicating old or broken analog synth voices. What’s neat is that the converted toy can also act as a MIDI controller to send velocity-sensitive note messages and polyphonic aftertouch to Logic Pro, Ableton Live and various music software programs.

Here’s a diagram of the software architecture of the synth:

software_architecture_diagram

You can read more about the hack here, as well as listen to some quick and rough sound/patch demos:

The project took three and a half months to bring to fruition, and let us just say, the final result is quite impressive! Check out the video below to learn more about its specs and explore the complete documentation on GitHub.

 

Mag
25

Synergizer: The Emergency Key-Turn Barbot

arduino hacks, barbot, bartendro, BeagleBone Black, drink dispenser, robots hacks, synergizer Commenti disabilitati su Synergizer: The Emergency Key-Turn Barbot 

Synergizer: Emergency Drink Dispenser

It’s been a rough day at the office. You need a break. But by yourself? No, what you need is to be Synergized! This Barbot only works if all four keys are inserted and turned — kind of like a nuclear launch procedure — only then will it dispense four perfectly sized drinks to make your day better.

The Synergizer uses an Arduino to control a belt driven linear actuator which moves the spout from cup to cup. A series of reed switches along the length provide feedback to the system for positional control. The machine makes use of a peristaltic pump, called the Bartendro Dispenser, which pumps an exact volume of your liquid of choice into each cup. The cool thing with peristaltic pumps is they are self priming,and capable of pumping an exact volume of liquid every time.

[Nick Poole], the designer, also included a CPU fan and heat-sink paired up with a peltier plate in order to also chill the liquid as it is being pumped. To make it even more interesting, he added a four key override, so the Synergizer can only be used if all four unique keys are inserted.

For a multi-liquid barbot, you have to check out this slick build by [Sean Carney] — it even has web access for control via any device!

 


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, robots hacks
Dic
06

Making Fun: Color-Hunting, Christmas Tree-Controlling CheerBot

arduino, BeagleBone Black, cheerlights, christmas, computer vision, Electronics, Robot, Robotics Commenti disabilitati su Making Fun: Color-Hunting, Christmas Tree-Controlling CheerBot 

cheerbotsmallI built a robot that controls the my Christmas lights and Christmas lights around the world by roaming my house looking for colors and tweeting them to the Cheerlights service.

Read more on MAKE

Flipbookit200We've had an influx of new arrivals in the Maker Shed lately and rather than tell you about them one blog post at a time, we thought it'd be more fun to post several at once!

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The Arduino YúnOver the last few months there have been a sudden rush of new micro-controller boards onto the market. A lot of that is down to Kickstarter and the appearance of a number slightly tweaked Arduino clones. A lot of them feature some sort of mesh networking, or other wireless capability. Here's ten new boards that have just arrived, or are coming to market real soon, that you should maybe think about for your next project.

Read more on MAKE



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