Itās for desktop use, the floorās too far away
Itās just a 64GB USB drive for storing gigs and sounds.
Iām using the standard recommended Rasp Pi 4 PSU and it seems to be fine with that.
The Rasp4 just has a small passive heatsink and although the heat can be felt on the top of the case after a while, it doesnāt seem to overheat, yet.
If it does, I have a few 5v laptop impellor type, flat fans kicking about, one of which might do the job to keep it cool on 3.3vā¦
Half a year ago I bought an Alesis Vortex Wireless 2 keytar. Itās nothing more than a MIDI-controller, which didnāt bother me all that much until I started jamming with friends. Hauling a laptop around and firing up a heavy DAW everytime you want to play is quite annoying.
Then the USB connector broke (apparantly there was a cable strap that reduced strain on the connectors which I never used), and when I opened it up to fix it I found lots of empty space.
So I built a Zynthian inside! It uses a Hifiberry zero as a dac, has a beefy 12 volt 6600 mAh battery with a charging circuit inside which lasts insanely long and a stereo 6.3 mm stereo jack as output. The rotary encoders are mounted below the keyboard for easy access when playing.
Using the MOD-UI to map the buttons and sliders to effects works great. Not having to boot up Ableton and load all presets / midi mappings motivates me to play more often.
I might add a screen later, but fitting it correctly will be quite difficult. For now Iām fine using my phone / laptop with VNC. Iām also considering adding a port for a sustain pedal.
Thanks to the people who dedicated so much time to this project. Setting up the mcp23017 with the encoders took a while but everything works like a charm.
Thanks! It is wired to the usb connector internally, Iāll add some pictures of the insides later. It still has the option to be used wirelessly or with the MIDI port running from 4 AA batteries.
Yes the scale and chord functions in the new Electribes are really good also the Sequenzer and the workflow. It is my first take together with the zynthian ā¦ it think itās a good combination ā¦ a lots of people didnāt like the Electribe due its limitations but with the zynthian what do you want more ?
The smallest screen that we have seen working is the 1.8" ST7735. It works but isnāt as comfortable to use as a larger screen. There was some discussion on offering a low resolution display for such devices but we didnāt peruse that. It is still on my list to return to but I currently have a massive 7" touchscreen. I would like to build a performance / spare Zynthian with the small screen but not todayā¦
So my Zynthian is finally finished. Or almost anyway, I not happy with everything like the crocked buttons and I would really like som nice faceplate with text.
The display to the left and the buttons is a MIDI-controller. Since my keyboard isnāt great when i comes to sending program change (it can but it is cumbersome especially if sending on ch 16 a k a loading snapshot) I wanted an easier way and since I had a arduino nano I figured I could send program change with it. After I while that idea grew and I thought it would be nice if it could visualize and change drawbar settings and maybe other settings as well.
This is a demo of how it works. There are som bugs that have to be fixed.
So I guess I have to show the inside. I donāt really want to because itās a mess.
I didnāt make a back panel since I was to lazy and I figured it might as well be opened fƶr air flow. I put in an extra input for a foot switch. It could probably be connected to the zynthian as well as the arduino.