AVR Synth/sequencer

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHmhdiQ8Xko]

[kernelcode] has built this pretty slick looking sequencer/groovebox and shared the process with the world. At its heart you’ll find an AVR atmega168 along with a hand full of buttons and blue LEDs. He says the total cost was somewhere around £15-20, so that’s somewhere under $40 for the American readers. There are tons of great pics of the build and it looks like he’ll be uploading source code soon as well.

[via hackerfoundry.com]

16 thoughts on “AVR Synth/sequencer

  1. @Dave
    No, it is absolutely not an Arduino.

    This is what people SHOULD be building in lieu of using those things. It demonstrates a good knowledge of microcontrollers, circuitry, and in this case music/audio theory.

    Great post, great hack, I think I might try to make one.

  2. These type of things are neat, but they are little more than novelties as-is.

    Anyone had any success getting a microcontroller like this to talk MIDI? (or even MIDI over USB if you want to get fancy)

  3. I only bought an Arduino because it’s an easy to use programmer. Whenever I want to build a project, I just pop the chip out after I’ve dumped my code and put it into something else. Buy another one and repeat. The Arduino really is just a programming board; it just happens to host output pins.

  4. uhm, where is my text where i apologized, said that i’m jealous, working on an equal project, startet this week, made an protoboarded atmega8 platform to prototype, heard some sounds and noises from my projekt, know the differences between an arduino and a single atmega168?

  5. actually i am working on a thing like this ;) i’m not that far with my work, it just makes some sounds and noises. I focus on generating sounds different from sine waves. I wanted to create sounds for communication/interaction, like r2d2 beeps. I was jealous XD

  6. sorry for the arduino note. I know that an arduino works with an atmega168 (now with 328). I bought some atmega8’s, made a curcuit on protoboard and program it with an usb-isp programmer on linux with makefiles and avrdude. Sometimes i wish i had an arduino, because it would be easier, having an all in one software, plugin the usb and done… so i know the difference. Maybe i’ll build it once.

  7. @Tachikoma: yeah i have wavetables for sine, square, triangle and sawtooth waves in memory, they get pushed to a pwm channel.
    @blue carbuncle: np :)
    @Asuraku: thats fair enough, i just make breadboard friendly programming boards, im sure arduinos are great, i would just rather not pay for something i can make for free!

  8. Check this out!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq4J3o7qFa0A

    Inside AVR ATXMEGA:
    * DCO with slide ( no PITCH control)
    * 16bit GEN ENVELOPE – dca envelope, dca accent envelope, dcf envelope
    * 16bit MOOG 18db digital implementation filter 2xoversampling
    * 16bit DCA (digital controlled amplifier) with zero cross-detection and GAIN module 1x – 63x amplification (saturation)
    * MIDI module
    * Channel selector 0 – 15

Leave a Reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.