First time ever I've not forgotten a track or net to connect up, assembled it correctly and the test code ran correctly on the first go !!
This is the final panel on my EPS synth that controls the Arpeggiator and lets you load and save patches, and also load up different wavetables and morph them - shed load of ESP32 code to write now to make it happen!
This is an Analogue percussion synth I built - I called it the Ospray 8 and it was based on 3 independent percussion synth modules, the designs of which were published in E&MM magazine in the UK in the early 1980's. There was a 'Syntom' module, a 'Synbal' module and a 'Synclap' module. I brought the schematics up to date, replaced obsolete components like the LM13600 and CA3080, a few tweaks here and there and did the PCB's in SMT, along with adding midi connectivity.
It works beautifully and sounds exactly like an 80's percussion synth would - but a complete commercial failure! Gave up with it, and returned to the day job..
Just sharing here as hardly anyone ever saw it, and I doubt anyone will see anymore as I only made 10.
If anyone wants the schematics / KiCad files - drop me a line, you may be able to better with it than I did!
Edit: There is a video of it running here - Kindly done by the Pro Synth Network last year:
https://youtu.be/fkr_UoGxKLg?si=46PlF6TlAmOY4ezm
Edit: It was suggested I put the files on GitHub - Thank you @IAmL0ner here's the link:
Picture of an experimental RZ568M Nixie tube, filled with Argon instead of Neon. Nice purple glow, but requires much more power to run - approx 280v and about 25mA.
I found these in my garage, in a box of various tubes and valves I had forgotten about.
No use to me so I'll put them on fleabay.. but does anyone know exactly what they are? Hexagonal end 3" across and overall length 11" The black end section contains some electronics with a ribbon cable coming out the back.
I had the opportunity to look inside and evaluate a very rare Thunderchild synthesizer. Sadly there are no schematics or drawings left - but I took these pictures of the main hand drawn PCB. You don't come across these very often so I thought I would share it!
The picture shows my workbench at the moment! I'm an embedded HW/SW engineer by profession, but I love to make stuff at home and this is my latest (longest) project so far..
Been working on this since January - It uses an ESP32 to model audio, and a selection of control boards that give the ESP32 parameter information over CAN. The ESP32 is on the little board at the the back left. There's then 3 oscillator boards, a commons board and I've just got the routing section working.
Works really well so far, makes noises and keeps me busy!
Hello! I'm an embedded HW/SW engineer by trade, with a passion for synthesizers so I though I would have a go at making one at home. Started it in January and it's now at a point where it's working and making sounds. I've not used a pre-made audio engine, it's all hardcoded from scratch.
In the clip everything comes out the back of the DAC on the ESP32 board, and it's a mix of either me playing notes badly on a midi controller keyboard or I just hooked it up to a sequencer.
The basic overview is that there's an ESP32-S3 running the audio engine on one core, and the other core processes midi and CAN data. The ESP32 doesn't poll a single button or switch, but receives a message over CAN along the lines of "Set oscillator 3 to Sawtooth" or "modulate FM ratio with LFO 2 for oscillators 2,3,4 at 35%" The majority of the time the CAN bus is quiet, it only sends a message when a control board sees a potentiometer or button change.
Sending (and receiving) the CAN control messages are a selection of boards that all have an AT238p polling the local knobs and switches, that construct the CAN message and fire it off. The ESP32 then sends an ACK which will light an led on the board if needed.
At the moment I have 3 oscillator board that each have 2 sets of oscillator controls so 6 oscillators in total. As the oscillator board has 2 oscillators (A&B) you can hard sync them, or FM modulate them together, or use them as 2 individual oscillators. 6 waveforms for each oscillator with 2 modifiers ( wavefolder and S&H modulator ) I also added a solo and clone function - you can solo any oscillator, tweak it to how you want and then clone the settings to the other oscillators, so when you play in poly they all sound the same, and then you can change each individual one if you want.
The commons board has 2 LFO's, ring modulator, ADSR and state variable filter - lowpass / highpass / bandpass along with envelope or keyboard tracking.
The routing board allows you to select any modulation source, and then any global destination - or there's a matrix where you can select any individual oscillator or parameter or combination of. It will let you create a maximum of 12 routes it applies to the audio engine all at once.
Next step is to use the SD card to allow patch storage and retrieval, and also change the initial wavetable - at the moment it generates a single sine at start-up and processes everything from that.
Have some of the details on Git https://github.com/Bad-Dog-Designs/ESP32-S3-Synthesizer
although not quite up to date yet, but my plan is to make it 100% open source.