A little teaser :-)

[IFadeToGrey]

[isak]

cool teaser wowowowowowo..must have it now!!!!

what the hell is it

[IFadeToGrey]

cool teaser wowowowowowo..must have it now!!!!

what the hell is it

I'll let ya know in a couple of weeks. It's not a x0xb0x. Imagine it as "ying" if the x0xb0x is "yang". It's very hackable. It's very versatile. It's something wonderful.

[xlarge]

big display PLUS two two digit char displays
0-9 keypad?
6 keys with a pot in the middle...
the led arrangement to the left is reminiscent of vu-meter
just a few pots under the display, multi-function one would guess.


No. I have no clue.

[digraph]

Personally, that DSP/FPGA sized chip has me interested...

[xlarge]

Personally, that DSP/FPGA sized chip has me interested...

Indeed, but so many pins and so few components...

[antto]

a multi-mode coffee machine with a polyphonic alarm clock?

[IFadeToGrey]

Polyphonic?... Yes. Although you should probably buffer the i/o somehow however before attempting to connect it to a coffee machine.

And the "pots" under the display are in fact rotary encoders.

Nearly all the pins on the bigger chip are routed, although half of them go to pin headers... (hmmmm....) And routing that chip BTW has been a royal pain in the ass!! Almost all of it has been done manually.

[xlarge]

So 5 encoders and one pot? Plus a couple of more pcb's? The plot thickens.

If we only saw you i/o board.. Is it a sequencer or an effect box?

[IFadeToGrey]

The core functionality is all on the main board, but with the ability to be expanded using the two sets of pin headers not being used for i/o or the LCD. The i/o board is actually somewhat similar to the x0xb0x. The dinsync jack has been replaced with a minisd card slot, the ft232rl is now an ft2232d, and the cv gate/gate jacks are now optical s/pdif. The power supply is also a bit different of course.

So 5 encoders and one pot? Plus a couple of more pcb's? The plot thickens.

If we only saw you i/o board.. Is it a sequencer or an effect box?

[Aguy]

Ying to yang?
So it must be a new x0xb0x styled 606 to match the x0x
like the 606 matched the 303!

Brilliant!

[IFadeToGrey]

Ying to yang?
So it must be a new x0xb0x styled 606 to match the x0x
like the 606 matched the 303!

Brilliant!

Neat idea, but no. I imagine that if I were doing an analog drum machine, I'd prolly go after the TR-808, but I've always been of the mindset that drum machines are one area where I'm ok with just having a bunch of samples.

And while I love analog synthesizers (and collect them obsessively in fact), this design is primarily digital. Although... one of the pin headers is specifically used for something that will be appreciated for those who are into analog.

[Luap]

If you can't tell us what it is, can you at least tell us what the deal with all the secrecy/teasing is?

[xlarge]

... one of the pin headers is specifically used for something that will be appreciated for those who are into analog.

So it is a sequencer then. With multiple cv/gate on one of the pin headers.

[IFadeToGrey]

If you can't tell us what it is, can you at least tell us what the deal with all the secrecy/teasing is?

It's really just a fun way to invite curiosity, but if you want the spoiler, it's a platform designed to run opensource (and perhaps commercial?) fpga-based synthesizers. (There are currently several opensource FPGA synths, including subtractive, additive, fm, and physical modelling types). The UI is running on a virtualized AVR softprocessor, so you can write/rewrite the UI using any AVR compiler. (I actually wrote the front end/midi processing/UI code in BASCOM basic)

The first implementation will likely have the following specs:

Subtractive
8 note polyphonic synth
4 osc per voice
4 LFOs
3 Envelopes
Sine, Triangle, PWM, Sawtooth, etc

It also has a 40 pin Parallax Propeller chip running effects driven by the Coyote-1 effects OS written for the OpenStomp guitar effects pedal. (I could have used a dedicated DSP, but this was so much more inviting, and already has all the effects most synth players would want). What's really cool is that it's so very hackable, and a great way to learn about both the Propeller as well as digital effects... (more to come)