I have compiled Cardinal and also patched it to enable some more advanced OSC interface. Our friend falkTX who maintains Cardinal is not keen on some of these changes and they are not robust yet so I submitted a PR upstream. I am using Cardinal (outside of Zynthian) on RPi4 as a PoC for a project. It mostly works on a 64-bit RPi. That project may inform our consideration of whether Cardinal fits well in Zynthian.
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Unfortunately I havenāt been playing with Zynthian recently either, but I do have a recurring half-idea for a Cardinal-running module as well:
- Raspberry pi (or orange pi) with Wifi, running a minimal system with buildroot, jack, jalv or modhost, and Cardinal
- Custom āhatā PCB with an I2S audio DAC, and a RP2040 (or similar) running a CV-to-MIDI (over serial on a high baud rate) and one or two push encoders (also through MIDI)
- Mini I2C screen, e.g. one of those cheap OLED displays
This should give 2x audio in, 2x audio out, 2-4 CV in at reasonable almost-audio speed, and no ridiculous costs in components. Well, beyond the time spent creating the schematic, PCB, and getting the software to play together 
Any updates on this?
I was recently discussing this with someone who wanted to use some of the Mutable Instruments equivalent modules in Zynthian.
Hey @riban - do you happen to know if those Pull Requests were accepted?
The PR was rejected. Upstream is not interested in making Cardinal work headless. They consider it as a GUI application. I have tried to abstract the core (non-gui) elements but it is challenging because of the heavy GUI integration. (That was for another project but the learning does support upstream preference to only support GUI use.)
I am still sceptical how well this fits into zynthian. We could add it as a special engine (like mod-ui) with limited zynthian UI integration and depend on native web-based configuration. This requires significant effort so, before embarking on such a task, we should test the validity of adding it. (I am not a fan of mod-ui in zynthian because it doesnāt offer much more than a pretty UI over what zynthian offers natively.) We donāt want to add the burden of supporting a fork if there is limited benefit to just a few users.
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Pity. It would have been nice if patches could be loaded into it a la PureData.
Speaking of PD, I see that at least some of the modules we were discussion are available as PD externalsā¦
Iām working on a PD version of Mutable Instruments Plaits and will post it when completed.
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Hi @rosum,
I did this once with 0-coast, and the possibility to change the patch with virtual cables on the fly. It was quite functional, but a bit CPU heavy in the end.
If youād need help with the zynthian integration (json file to get the controls usable in the UI), donāt hesitate ā¦
Another approach would be to use the DSP code and build a lv2 plugin for this using the DISTRHO framework. Then you could have multiple instances of plaits running in zynthian. If Iād only had the time for this ā¦ 
Good luck
BTW - I didnāt want to capture this topicā¦
Oh, thatās a good idea. Iād really like the physical modelling modules like Elements and Rings as lv2 plugins.
Itās just a pity I hate C++ with the heat of a thousand fiery suns. 
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That is really hilarious @Kirtai 
What is the origin of such uncompromising hate, for the good olā father of all current programming languages? Just curious: you certainly have well-founded reasons based on disappointing experiences!
Most of my programming has been done in Lisp and Smalltalk 
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After a short research I found i.e. this lv2 mutable instruments clone source:
I tried to compile on my desktop. After a second make call it compiles, the lv2 plugins showed up in carla, but I didnāt manage to get any sound, i.e. by using the āpoly macro oscā.
Also, because of being a eurorack module it has a lot of CV in- and outputs.
Another idea would be to compile the puredata libraries of the MI clones on zynthian, and then use pd to get access to them.
If Iād had the time ā¦ a pityā¦
Regards
Is it, perhaps, becoming a little rusty in itās old age. . . ?
Python is as far as a disinterested user should go.
Down there be dragonsā¦ & PD Peopleā¦
Good isnāt it?
No love for ZZT-OOP?
EDIT: I was joking, but then I realized my introduction to making electronic music was trying to make PC speaker covers of Metallica riffs in ZZT-OOP when I was like 11. Itās been downhill from there.