A SNES Music Player You Can Control With A Browser

August 8, 2021 by Lewin Day 3 Comments

Listening to chiptunes on an emulator or software-based player is fine, but sometimes you just gotta have that real hardware charm. [Kazhuu] is one such enthusiast who feels this way, and set about building a hardware player for SNES chiptunes that can be controlled from a browser.

The build relies on an Arduino Micro to control the SNES Audio Processing Unit (APU), featuring the Nintendo S-SMP as produced by Sony and designed by Ken Kutaragi. Yes, the father of the PlayStation designed the capable wavetable synthesis chip in the Super Nintendo, and it’s that same hardware that [Kazhuu]’s project interfaces with modern hardware.

With the Arduino’s IO lines hooked up to the APU, song data can be piped out to the Arduino over a serial connection to a PC. This can be handled by a Python script, or more intuitively via a browser-based front-end. This uses WebUSB in order to take input from the browser and then send data out over the USB-serial connection to the Arduino.

It’s a neat demonstration of both working with vintage Nintendo sound hardware and how to code modern browser applications to work with embedded systems. If you’re a SEGA kid, though, you might prefer this build instead. Video after the break.

Continue reading “A SNES Music Player You Can Control With A Browser” →

SNES Drone Aims To Rock The SPC700

September 8, 2019 by Lewin Day 7 Comments

Way back when, home computers and consoles didn’t have the RAM or storage space for full-length recorded audio tracks. Instead, a variety of techniques were used to synthesize music on the fly. The SNES was no exception, using the SPC700 Wavetable Synthesis chip to bust out the tunes. [Foxchild] wanted to use this chip as a standalone synthesizer, but didn’t want to hack up a console to do so. Thus, the SNES Drone was born!

Instead of gutting the console for the juicy chips inside, à la most SID based builds, the SNES Drone takes a different approach. It consists of a cartridge which interfaces with a stock SNES console, making the install easy and non-invasive.

The build is in an alpha state, with the oscillators in the SNES generating continuous tones, with frequency and volume controlled by potentiometers mounted on the cartridge. Having physical controls on the cartridge makes the build feel more like a real synth, and promises to look awesome on stage for a chiptune performance.

[Foxchild] is looking for others to get involved to help get the project to the next stage, so if you’re interested, reach out on the Hackaday.io page. We’ve seen other projects to liberate the awesome chip sounds of yesteryear, too. Video after the break.

Continue reading “SNES Drone Aims To Rock The SPC700” →

Portable SNES Chiptune Player

August 30, 2017 by Lewin Day 8 Comments

Chiptunes are the fantastic, bleeping musical renditions of the soundchips of retro consoles past. Performers of the art overwhelmingly favour the various flavours of Game Boy, though there are those who work with such varied machines as the Commodore 64, Sega Genesis, and the Nintendo Entertainment System. A little more off the beaten track in the chiptune scene is the Super Nintendo, but [kevtris] has struck out and built a chiptune player for SNES-based music.

The heavy lifting is handled by an FPGA, which emulates the SNES’s S-SMP sound processor, and handles loading the music from the SPC-format files. Being chiptunes, these files store both the instrument data as well as the note data for the music. Audio output is clean and crisp, as heard in the test video.

The laser cut case lends the device a great aesthetic.

Case design is where this project really shines. Laser cut clear acrylic is combined with a bright LCD character display and some LEDs which create an effect not unlike a glowing magical block from your 90s platformer of choice. It’s combined with some slick capacitive buttons that avoid the need to drill holes for bulky traditional buttons. [kevtris] goes through the case design, showing how it all fits together with a combination of screws and standoffs. Being built out of a series of essentially 2D slices, the case is stacked up one layer at a time.

What really stands out about this project is the fit and finish. There’s plenty of microcontroller and FPGA projects out there that can hum out a tune, but the attention to detail paid to the case design and the neatly laid out PCB really add polish to a project like this. For a different take, why not check out this chiptune player built around a Raspberry Pi?

[Thanks Morris!]