Thread by @jarz_0

Excited to share my first foray into music-making hardware! The Abacuysnth is designed to be easy and fun to play regardless of musical background -- it's a physical implementation of some ideas I've been experimenting with in software.

#synth #synthesizer #hardware #music #dsp

Here are some photos after I painted it... Thank you @GalaxyKate for your amazing research into Casual Creators which I found invaluable for designing in this space! (galaxykate.com/blog/casualcre…)

Inside there is a Daisy Seed microcontroller by @electrosmithco that process the sensors and generates the sound — check out the more on the process here: eliasjarzombek.com/abacusynth-har…

Really appreciate all the responses so far!! Here's some more on how it works: The spinners are purely mechanical -- each one contains a whole fidget spinner since they were the best ball bearings I could find and also are weighted -- they are sandwiched in between layers of wood

All of the electronics are attached to the outer walls -- the inner section is removable, so in theory it could be replaced with another implementation! Maybe two large spinners or something more experimental...

As for the sensors themselves, each rod measures distance and rotation speed with IR sensors in the left wall. The top is for the distance sensor, the bottom sensor receives light from the opposite side as it passes through the slots in the spinners.

The encoder (the knob on the outer wall) is on the same PCB as the distance sensor. Here you can also see the hole on the right wall for the IR light source

The back has power, MIDI input, and a line level output:

While I record some sounds with the hardware... here's a compilation of tracks made using the Abacusynth Plugin (digital version of the same concept) by some wonderful people
jarz0.bandcamp.com/album/abacusyn…

wow literally just realized i made a typo in the name.....