Arduino Music Synthesizer Shield

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espian
 
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Arduino Music Synthesizer Shield

Post by espian »

All,

I wanted to announce my music synthesizer shield project on kickstarter.com.

This is based on the SAM2195 by Dream. I have seen many individuals comment on wishing this would be integrated into a shield design--now you can actually get one. You simply pipe midi information over the serial port and you have fantastic sounding music and sound effects.

All of the design files will ultimately be uploaded, but at least for now, you can hear the unit play on the project site. If you find this worthwhile, please pass this link along to anyone that would find it interesting!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/243 ... sic-synthe

Thank you,

Keith

adafruit
 
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Re: Arduino Music Synthesizer Shield

Post by adafruit »

very cool project!

cheers,
adafruit

espian
 
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Re: Arduino Music Synthesizer Shield

Post by espian »

Thanks!

The project has been updated with more technical info.

Also, thanks to everyone who has supported the project!

-Keith

espian
 
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Joined: Fri Dec 16, 2011 3:24 pm

Re: Arduino Music Synthesizer Shield

Post by espian »

Everyone,

I posted a few weeks ago about a MIDI synthesizer shield that we currently have on kickstarter.com. To support that board we have created a support library that works in conjunction with the Arduino MIDI library. It can be used with our shield or with other hardware. In particular, it allows a user to 'capture' MIDI note-on/-off messages in time, store them, and then play them back.

A blog post is shown below. It includes some notes on using the new library with different MIDI library versions as well as direct links to download the new library from github.

http://brainmux.BANNED.com/2012/01/0 ... al-commit/

I hope this is found useful on your MIDI projects!

-Keith

PS: AvecSynth is now a "Staff Pick" on kickstart.com!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/243 ... sic-synthe

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jasonwebb
 
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Re: Arduino Music Synthesizer Shield

Post by jasonwebb »

Congrats on your successful Kickstarter funding! I hope you get even more over the next few days :)

You mentioned in the video and in this post that you'll be releasing the design files eventually, but I was curious about what the electronics look like (or will look like) now. Are you still planning to implement this as a shield, or is the Arduino + synth integrated into one board? The Kickstarter page leads one to believe that the Arduino is built in, so that the backers will not need to buy an Arduino themselves in addition to the synth, is this correct? Also, how will you implement the serial port? USB w/ HID? MIDI connector? RS-232?

I'd really like to hear your story about your experience with Kickstarter; many of us hobby engineer-types want to make some money, but are unsure of whether or not to use Kickstarter. How much work had you done before putting up your Kickstarter page (a few weeks, months, longer?)? How much have you done to promote the Kickstarter project (showing prototypes on blogs, posting in forums, etc)? If you'd care to comment, how much money do you expect / hope to take away from this project?

Excited to see what will happen over the next few weeks as you go into production, and would love to hear more about your experiences. I really hope you are able to document the process for other maker's out there!

espian
 
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Dec 16, 2011 3:24 pm

Re: Arduino Music Synthesizer Shield

Post by espian »

Hi!

Thanks for the congratulations and the interest in the project.

I don't have tons of time at the moment, so I'll try to answer your questions as quickly as possible.

First, AvecSynth is designed to be a stackable shield for the Arduino, it does not have the Arduino processor or other supporting functionality. However, it can work as a stand-alone synthesizer through the MIDI interface with no Arduino attached (assuming you supply power, of course).

If you look here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/243 ... nthe/posts

and in particular at update number 2, I think several of your technical-type questions will be answered.

Kickstarter is a great way to fund projects like this. It's not a perfect way to fund all endeavors, but this one works well. I will say that I think I had between 80-100 hours into setting up the project and all of the supporting efforts--I felt like this really was short-changing these efforts, though. The promotion part that you asked about is absolutely key. Just because you put a kickstarter page up does not translate into pledges. We identified three main groups that would potentially be interested in our project Embedded DIY Engineers, Amateur Musicians, and Physical Artists. From that we tried to find ways to reach out to each group. One way is through forums, like this one. Also doing press releases to sites like Hackaday.com, etc. Additionally, one of the things we wanted to make sure we did was be pretty close to a finished product before launching on kickstarter.com. Part-time (a few hours per week), I would say there is 4-5 months design time prior to today.

As far as money made on this kickstarter project (and its a moving target at this point), there won't be much overall profit as we're using the monies generated to off-set all of the NRE and start-up costs for this design. PCB NRE, solder stencil creation, pick and place programming time, all add up. Our goal was to off-set these costs, show that there is a market for such a product, and ultimately start selling into distributors like Adafruit.

Once we get to that point, we won't be making tons of money on this (or any of our other embedded designs that will be coming out), but I am looking forward to having some of the things sitting in my design notebook being used by people and in projects around the world.

I plan on doing a full write-up/blog post on my personal blog once the project is completed and when some other commitments settle down. I'll post a link when its ready.

All my best,

Keith

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