Concept

A compact 80's-style audio synthesizer/sequencer on an inexpensive microcontroller. Allows mixing and creating live synthetic audio.

How it sounds

Like Electro / Dubstep.

The Software

We wrote our embedded digital signal processing firmware (in C/C++), using a lightweight RTOS (Real-Time Operating System) to process and combine multiple audio modulation streams in parallel.

The Hardware

Running the signal processing firmware is an inexpensive ARM-based (Cortex M0+) microcontroller on the NXP FRDMKL25Z development board, programmed using the web-based Arm MBED IDE. The circuitry we built around it allows us to use multiple audio inputs channels, as well as arbitrarily combine multiple amplitude and frequency modulation channels. By lack of a DAC (Digital-to-Analog-Converter), certain analog effects are simulated by the micro-controller, which drives the output signal through a low-pass RC circuit, whose output is the audio signal which connects to any standard speaking using a female audio connector.

Major Difficulties

The lack of an oscilloscope makes analog design significantly harder ! XD

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