@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

diyelectromusic

@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social

Simple DIY electronic music projects - #Arduino, #RaspberryPi #MIDI, #synthdiy, where music and #STEM overlap. Home of the #LoFiOrchestra and follower of #MakersHour.

Blog: https://diyelectromusic.wordpress.com/@diyelectromusic.wordpress.com

Videos: https://makertube.net/accounts/diyelectromusic

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

diyelectromusic, to random
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

Wow - that's a lot of bits (at least for me) :)

Finally going to start soldering up one of my pcbs...

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

Ok, well I've no idea if it is actually going to do what I want it to, but it certainly looks the part...

Approx 2.5 hours to assemble - not too bad.

I'm not even going to test the basics right now though - that can wait until tomorrow :)

Photo of the populated PCB now with the front panel resting on the top showing the pots and connection points poking through. The panel is labelled in 6 sections: VCO 1 and VCO 2 at the top, then LFO and VCA then two sections at the bottom EG 1 and EG 2.

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

@davidr That's the plan, but as it's an ESP32, it will only have a small range of just over 3 octaves. I toyed with the idea of scaling down a 0-5V range, but then decided I wanted the internal voltages to be real 1V/oct signals so I stuck with 0-3V3.

It isn't really designed to be integrated with anything else as such, but there is some (very limited) protection - based on things I've found online rather than any real understanding on my part (see my design blog post for details).

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

@bytex64 Well, looking at them might be all I'll end up doing yet - I still need to finish the code (assuming the board actually works)

diyelectromusic, to random
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

Kind of logged in and expected to see #triffid trending this morning...

thompsondt, to rust
@thompsondt@mastodon.social avatar

@diyelectromusic, since you're into embedded tech and microcontrollers, you may appreciate this one.

It's a Real-time Operating System kernel I wrote in C and Assembly for AVR chips. My intent was to learn about how operating systems interface with hardware.

I'd like to rewrite it with and finish the task scheduler.

https://gitlab.com/thompsondt/simplicity

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

@thompsondt Oh good for you! I've always wondered about doing something like that but not sure I'll ever get round to it :)

The ESP32 seems to build-in FreeRTOS and that provides the multicore/multitasking capabilities at the moment, but that always seemed a bit OTT to me.

I've never experimented with it on AVR.

And "just because" is always the best reasons IMO!

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

@thompsondt You mean there is a discipline for using git!? That magic knowledge continues to elude me...

diyelectromusic, to SynthDIY
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

I've started writing up my thoughts, design, and development thinking for an ESP32 based sort-of-educational pseudo-analog synth toy/hack/plaything meant to be used with a breadboard for extras.

I'm probably tempting fate by posting about it at this point, but I had several posts in draft so thought I'd hit "go" on them anyway.

When I get the actual boards back, if the posts all suddenly disappear, you'll know it was a bit of a disaster!

https://diyelectromusic.wordpress.com/2024/05/07/educational-diy-synth-thing/

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

Boards have arrived. Not sure when I'll get a chance to build one mind... :)

Watch this space.

#WorkInProgress #WIP #SynthDIY

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

@poetaster I'll savour the moment :)

Nah, seriously I don't want to make a mistake and have quite a lot on atm. Also there is the small matter of the patch board that is about a week behind and a couple of parts still in the post!

diyelectromusic, to RaspberryPi
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

I appear to have MiniDexed (and circle) supporting ST7789 displays now, which means I can use a Pimoroni Pirate Audio with MiniDexed!

If you only need USB MIDI this is about as simple an option as it will be possible to have.

It would be a particularly neat, self-contained Pi Zero USB Gadget...

#Pimoroni #MiniDexed #RaspberryPi

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

@apgarcia Not really - most of things I've done have just used a common, cheap PCM5102 I2S DAC (see my blog), but then nothing I do could be considered high end in any way :)

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

Oh that's a bit annoying...

Does that look like a hardware fault to you? It gets worse with pressure on the bottom left corner of the display (near the "B" button) :/

hmm.

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

@gadgetoid I've had it a while, but the first time I was using it was this weekend and has been fine for a couple of days use.

If I get a mo, I'll try to get a stock setup installed somehow, but I don't have a spare SD/image to hand straight away...

I guess the question really is could software do that? It's not really the kind of thing I'd expect software to be able to do...

The existing circle C++ driver looks based on the Pimoroni python lib - I was only adding stuff on top.

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

@gadgetoid ha - thanks - no worries.

I think I might have an alternative Arduino st7789 around somewhere... I'll see what I can find! :)

diyelectromusic, to random
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

You know that thing where you move two function-scoped variables to the object level, rename them appropriately, and then forget to remove the local type assignment and wonder why they appear uninitialised later on?

That.

1.5 hours ago and I've finally just spotted it :)

diyelectromusic, to random
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

That sinking feeling when you realise that pcb that has been built and is on its way back to you has a narrow DIP footprint when you now realise you needed a wide DIP footprint... sigh.

Hey ho. Time to get inventive :)

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

@bytex64 To be fair, that is kind of where my mind was going... but I'll probably have to flip it and stick it on the back! :)

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

Hey ho. Needs must...

I would have just fudged it, but there won't be room on top to do the "at an angle" thing or use a simpler stripboard adaptor...

I'll have to mount it underneath and so need to mirror the pins as well as expand them.

I'll probably rework the board once I've tested it anyway, but this should get me going at a fraction of the cost at least - and would do at a pinch if need be :)

suearcher, to random
@suearcher@toot.wales avatar

Mae'r golau bore yn eitha hyfryd, dwi'n meddwl.

The morning light is quite lovely, I think.

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

@axwax @cymplecy @suearcher I can't see this ending well... but at least Sue will have it on camera :)

(now we just need an AT-AT walking up the road)

grahamdunning, to random
@grahamdunning@post.lurk.org avatar

Trying to wrap my head around something which outwardly appeared simple with Arduino code. Took 6 pages of notes, several graphs and about 2hrs deep concentration, and came out the other end as about 4 lines of code.
Hope it works, it's a slow process for me but quite satisfying.

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

@grahamdunning Yes - this. I often find that too. Will you be putting your notes up somewhere?

I do find reading others' thought processes for things like this quite fascinating :)

alexisbushnell, to makershour
@alexisbushnell@toot.wales avatar

A2 Dollshouses always make me nostalgic because I made one with my dad as a child. He built the house itself and then together we decorated the walls and floors, fitted lights, put the furniture in.

My step-mum got rid of it when he died sadly so I don't have it, I wish I did but at the time I was in no state to ask or think at all (I was 14) and nobody else considered it.

#MakersHour @makershour

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

@alexisbushnell @makershour Yes, there are a few toys I wished I'd kept.

But thankfully I kept my small stash of music tech - largely because I'd bought it myself!

And Lego. I did keep all the Lego. One day I'll have to sort it all out...

themagpi, to random
@themagpi@mastodon.social avatar

Good morning, folks! We hope you had an excellent weekend

Working on any Raspberry Pi or Pico projects? Send us a photo of it! It might end up in the mag...

#MagPiMonday

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

@themagpi We've merged in preliminary Raspberry Pi 5 support to MiniDexed thanks to Rene's excellent Circle bare metal OS now supporting it. It's still considered experimental and doesn't currently do anything a Pi 3 or 4 can't do, but it does appear to work.

The photo is me testing PWM audio output on my Pi 5.

#MiniDexed #RaspberryPi #MagPiMonday

https://github.com/probonopd/MiniDexed

diyelectromusic, to esp32
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

My experiments looking for the simplest, cheapest VCA possible to pair with my ESP32 envelope generator code...

https://diyelectromusic.wordpress.com/2024/04/20/esp32-dac-envelope-generator-part-2/

#ESP32 #SynthDiy

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

@poetaster Ha - brilliant. And sorry :)

You know, if people are going to start paying attention to my drivel then I might have to stop writing it ;)

So do you think the PWM carrier frequency is bleeding through somehow?

FWIW, everything I know about filtering PWM for audio I've noted here, but probably nothing you don't already know: https://diyelectromusic.wordpress.com/2021/07/11/arduino-pwm-output-filter-circuit/

diyelectromusic,
@diyelectromusic@mastodon.social avatar

@poetaster Ah interesting - no didn't know that. But I've not done much with the Pico directly still... the most I've done so far was the PicoDexed set of experiments, which this may well affect! :)

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • Leos
  • rosin
  • InstantRegret
  • ethstaker
  • DreamBathrooms
  • mdbf
  • magazineikmin
  • thenastyranch
  • Youngstown
  • tacticalgear
  • slotface
  • Durango
  • khanakhh
  • kavyap
  • megavids
  • everett
  • vwfavf
  • normalnudes
  • osvaldo12
  • cubers
  • GTA5RPClips
  • cisconetworking
  • ngwrru68w68
  • anitta
  • provamag3
  • tester
  • modclub
  • JUstTest
  • All magazines
    •