No inputs? A bit limiting as eurorack is all about interoperability. Without inputs no synchronicity. No module is an island…
Ah, we are crawling into Pico eurorack here… Did you wish to run?
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One more Adafruit offering (Their 3rd RP2020 board)
This 20mm board has much the same functionality as the Raspberry board, just fewer pins, Adafruit has been upgrading board designs with better processors, while maintaining the same pinout. They have upgraded some 8 bit processor boards to 32 bit processors, adding the capability to code in Circuit python.
The original QT PY has a SAMD21 processor and is pin compatible with the $4.90 Seeedstudio Xiao
I just noticed you can download the (student oriented) Getting Started with Micropython the Pi Pico book for free
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Arduino IDE Support for Pi Pico is Available
In a random check, I just discovered support for lightweight C++ coders is out (my 10 year old hardware and limited wetware has had issues with some pro grade tool chain installations)
Earle Philhower has crafted a typical no-brainer installer, here are the essential steps:
-
Open up the Arduino IDE and go to File->Preferences.
-
In the dialog that pops up, enter the following URL in the “Additional Boards Manager URLs” field: paste:
https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico/releases/download/global/package_rp2040_index.json
- Go to Tools->Boards->Board Manager in the IDE Type “pico” in the search box and select “Add”
(You will want to read the docs in the github depository)
The IDE wants to write to the Pico when it’s mounted as a volume on you computer (hold BootSel button when connecting)
The Port selection is:
. UF2 device:
. (Board RPI 2040)
After uploading, you will have to re-select the board’s port as a serial device if interacting with the Serial Monitor window, as in the Bootsel example sketch.
The counterpart of the classic “hello world” Blink sketch is the Fade example.
As yet it doesn’t handle some board specific functionality, you will only? be using 1 of the 2 cores, I2S for hires audio is facilitated by the chip’s programmable I/O in sample code from the official toolchain.
For Windows and Linux developers:
Tom’s Hardware article: Arduino (and CMake) on Windows & Linux (he has 5 other Pi Pico articles)
In addition to the official C++ tool chain (including an example to drive a 640x320cm HUB-75 mini LED video wall (with 24,576 LEDs) I happen to have)
Micropython and Circuitpython are well supported. Adafruit’s Circuitpython that provides low level stubs for a large library of peripheral drivers. Some music & controler pertinent functions:
audiobusio, audiocore, audiomp3, audiopwmio, rotaryio, sdcardio, usb_midi
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Some good work in here, if you are starting to play with pico
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Here’s a 4x4 MIDI controller matrix based on a Pi Pico
A clean design with a window for checking on your Pico.
This design clearly needs to be able to store multiple matrix setups, a long joystick press could enter the preset selection mode, in it’s simplest form there would be 16 matrix storage slots (perhaps changing the button number color to indicate the current matrix)
(In the demo she is playing her 30 solenoid powered Xylophone you can make out in the background)
She has other Music vlog posts.
Detailed Adafruit video and part links, crediting Liz above for software.
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I must congratulation you on the orange colour.
I can’t but help here this … . .
Bit before my time… I don’t really understand
UFO! Saturday morning TV was banned in our house when I was a kid so I missed it first time around. I watched the complete series during my pre-Covid bus commute. Very cheesy, but the theme tune is wicked! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2PoXfZdYVU
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I don’t believe that series made it to the new world. It does bring to mind the movie Galaxy Quest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnjoiqfhDtQ
It’s probably close to 50 years old…
I think there was a US remake of it, maybe?
Using a Raspberry Pi Pico as a Logic Analyzer with PulseView
The open source Sigrok logic analyzer software runs on a number of platforms, it works with a variety of ‘smart instruments’ including an $8 Chinese Logic analyzer dongles running an old FPLA, connected to your PC.
The Hackster How To article shows how to capture data to a CSV file for Sigrok Pulseview to examine. They have a MIDI protocol decoder among many others. (The Pico appears fast enough for I2C signals)
The single C file is intended for the Pi foundation tool chain but may be a adaptable to the Arduino IDE plugin (or PlatformIO? let me know)
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A couple RP2040 based programmable USB Keypads from from PIMORONI
Pico RGB Keypad Base with 4x4 smart LED rainbow-illuminated keypad
Solder in your Raspberry Pi Pico £21.90
(Programmed with micropython)
.
Keybow 2040 4x4 USB Keypad £49.50
A more compact design with an integrated chip.
(Programmed with Circuitpython, 9 Examples) . . . 56 Minute Video
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the first one is already out of stock ! while I found the second one a bit expensive … but anyway these are interesting products.
This looks good… I’m glad someone has done this. Any for sale? Any test units?
The PIO might be useful for some quick format conversion of signals, but I don’t know if the cores can accomplish much 24 bit signal processing, certainly the availability of the rp2040 is a plus.
A Cortex M4, like in the ATSAMD51 could do a lot more, (apparently the Cortex-M4F is the variation with hardware floating point) Adafruit, who have regular posts regarding chip shortages, seem to be out of stock of a lot of their ATSAMD51 boards.
The powerful Cortex-M7 used in the Teensy 4.0 , 4.1 could do some tricky effects, he is expecting a shipment of the NXP chips finally in January (some Teensy 3.x chips are delayed until June 2023.)
His *Audio System Design Tool" allows one to visually design a process chain and output Arduino source code. It works with his Cortex M4 boards as well.
I ran across the HackaDay write up on a Euro Rack implementation of that board?, mentioning Vult DSP transcompiler…
just followed through to the PicoADK-FreeRTOS-Template link, where I noticed the helpful fixed point function library: src/vultin.cpp along with the vultsrc/dsp.vult it gets a surprising amount of work done by the rp2040.
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Hey, Datanoise here, the maker of the PicoADK. A small amount of boards is left and 80 more to be ordered as soon as possible!
The code examples actually work well even with polyphonic Vult DSP based synths with a simple echo. More is possible as well. A ladder filter and state variable filter also works well!
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Picosynth
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