Building A Granular Sampler Synth

December 16, 2025 by 8 Comments

Synthesizing sounds from scratch is all well and good, you just use a bit of maths. However, the latest build from [Daisy] eschews such boring concepts as additive or subtractive synthesis, instead going for a sample-based approach.

This build is based around the Daisy Seed microcontroller platform. It was actually inspired by an earlier project to create a ribbon synth, which we covered previously. In this case, the ribbon potentiometer has been repurposed, being used to control the playback position of a lengthy recorded sample. In this build, the Daisy Seed is running its audio playback system at a rate of 48,000 samples per second. It’s capable of storing up to 192,000 samples in memory, so it has a total of 4 seconds of sample storage. The Daisy Seed uses an analog-to-digital input to record two seconds of audio into the sample buffer. It can then be replayed by placing a finger on the ribbon at various points. Playback is via granular synthesis, where small sections of the overall sample buffer are used to synthesize a new tone. The video explains how the granular synthesis algorithm is implemented using the Plugdata framework. Design files are available for those eager to replicate the build.

Once you start tinkering in the world of synthesis, it’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole. Video after the break.

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Debugging The AMD GPU

December 16, 2025 by 1 Comment

Although Robert F. Kennedy gets the credit for popularizing it, George Bernard Shaw said: “Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream of things that never were and say, ‘Why not?'” Well, [Hadz] didn’t wonder why there weren’t many GPU debuggers. Instead, [Hadz] decided to create one.

It wasn’t the first; he found some blog posts by [Marcell Kiss] that helped, and that led to a series of experiments you’ll enjoy reading about. Plus, don’t miss the video below that shows off a live demo.

It seems that if you don’t have an AMD GPU, this may not be directly useful. But it is still a fascinating peek under the covers of a modern graphics card. Ever wonder how to interact with a video card without using something like Vulkan? This post will tell you how.

Writing a debugger is usually a tricky business anyway. Working with the strange GPU architecture makes it even stranger. Traps let you gain control, but implementing features like breakpoints and single-stepping isn’t simple.

We’ve used things like CUDA and OpenCL, but we haven’t been this far down in the weeds. At least, not yet. CUDA, of course, is specific to NVIDIA cards, isn’t it?

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Illustrated Kristina with an IBM Model M keyboard floating between her hands.

Keebin’ With Kristina: The One With The Curious Keyboards

December 16, 2025 by 5 Comments

I love first builds! They say so much about a person, because you see what’s paramount to them in a keyboard. You can almost feel their frustration at other keyboards come through their design choices. And the Lobo by [no-restarts] is no exception to any of this.

There’s just something about this Corne-like object with its custom case and highly-tappable and variously tilted keycaps. The list of reasons for being begins innocently enough with [no-restarts] wanting a picture of their dog on the case.

A nicely-tented split keyboard with really interesting, 3D-printed keycap profiles.
Image by [no-restarts] via reddit
From there, things get really personal. You may notice the thumb cluster is slightly different — [no-restarts] doesn’t like the thumb tuck required by the Corne to reach the innermost keys. I really dig the homing bumps on the middle thumb keys. Another difference is the splayed layout, as [no-restarts] is especially prone to pinky splay. Finally, there are a pair of OLEDs hiding on the inner sides of the case, which are designed to be visible when tented.

Overall, [no-restarts] is happy with it, but has some ideas for revision. Yep, that sounds about right. The Lobo is all hand-wired, and there’s a PCB with hot swap sockets in its future. If you’re interested in the case files, GitHub is your friend.

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Virtual Pet Responds To WiFi

December 16, 2025 by 4 Comments

When the Tamagotchi first launched all those decades ago, it took the world by storm. It was just a bunch of simple animations on a monochrome LCD, but it had heart, and people responded to that. Modern technology is capable of so much more, so [CiferTech] set out to build a virtual pet that can sniff out WiFi networks.

The build employs an ESP32-S3, perhaps the world’s favorite microcontroller that has WiFi baked right in from the factory. It’s paired with a 240×240 TFT LCD that delivers bright, vivid colors to show the digital pet living inside. Addressable WS2812B LEDs and a simple sound engine provide further feedback on the pet’s status.

The pet has various behaviors coded in, like hunting, exploring, and resting, and moods such as “happy,” “curious,” and “bored.” For a bit of environmental reactivity, [CiferTech] also made the local WiFi environment play a role. Nearby networks can influence the “hunger, happiness, and health” of the pet.

Incidentally, if you’ve ever wondered what made the Tamagotchi tick, we’ve explored that before, too.

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Thorium-Metal Alloys And Radioactive Jet Engines

December 16, 2025 by 21 Comments

Although metal alloys is not among the most exciting topics for most people, the moment you add the word ‘radioactive’, it does tend to get their attention. So too with the once fairly common Mag-Thor alloys that combine magnesium with thorium, along with other elements, including zinc and aluminium. Its primary use is in aerospace engineering, as these alloys provide useful properties such as heat resistance, high strength and creep resistance that are very welcome in e.g. jet engines.

Most commonly found in the thorium-232 isotope form, there are no stable forms of this element. That said, Th-232 has a half-life of about 14 billion years, making it only very weakly radioactive. Like uranium-238 and uranium-235 it has the unique property of not having stable isotopes and yet still being abundantly around since the formation of the Earth. Thorium is about three times as abundant as uranium and thus rather hard to avoid contact with.

This raises the question of whether thorium alloys are such a big deal, and whether they justify removing something like historical artefacts from museums due to radiation risks, as has happened on a few occasions.

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After Decades, Linux Finally Gains Stable GPIB Support

December 16, 2025 by 39 Comments

Recently, [Greg Kroah-Hartman] proclaimed the joyous news on the Linux Kernel Mailing List that stable General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB) support has finally been merged into the 6.19 Linux kernel.

The GPIB is a short-range 8-bit, multi-master interface bus that was standardized as IEEE 488. It first saw use on HP laboratory equipment in the 1970s, but was soon after also used by microcomputers like the Commodore PET, Commodore 64 and others. Although not high-speed with just 8 MB/s, nor with galvanic isolation requirements, it’s an uncomplicated bus design that can be implemented without much of a blip on the BOM costs.

The IEEE 488 standard consists of multiple elements, with 488.1 defining the physical interface and 488.2 the electrical protocol. Over the decades a communication protocol was also developed, in the form of SCPI and its standardized way of communicating with a wide range of devices using a simple human-readable protocol.

Although the physical side of IEEE 488 has changed over the years, with Ethernet becoming a major alternative to the short GPIB cables and large connectors, the electrical protocol and SCPI alike are still very much relevant today. This latest addition to the Linux kernel should make it much easier to use both old and new equipment equipped with this bus.

Why Push A Button When A Machine Can Do It For You

December 16, 2025 by 21 Comments

Remote control is a wonder of the age, we press a button, and something happens as if by magic. But what happens if there is no remote control, and instead a real physical button must be pressed? [What Up TK Here], who regular Hackaday readers might just recognize, had just this problem, and made a remote control button presser.

It’s a 3D printed frame which we’re told is designed for a specific item, on top of which is mounted a hobby servo. Rotating the servo brings the lever down on the button, and the job is done. At the user end there’s a button in a printed enclosure that’s definitely not a knock-off of a well-known franchise from a notoriously litigious console company.

This is all good, but the interest for other projects lies in how it works. It’s using a pair of ESP32 microcontrollers, and instead of connecting to an existing WiFi network it’s using ESP-NOW for simplicity and low latency. This is a good application for the protocol, but as we’ve seen, it’s useful for a lot more than just button pressing.

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