Success Cases

Itā€™s for desktop use, the floorā€™s too far away :wink:
Itā€™s just a 64GB USB drive for storing gigs and sounds.
Iā€™m 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 doesnā€™t 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€¦

I do have a kite :slight_smile:

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Congratulations @guiseppi!
Your zynthian is a beast, my friend!!
Of course, we would like to ear something for it ā€¦ :face_with_monocle:

:rofl:

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I knew I forgot somethingā€¦

Minions, boil some more oil, the populous must suffer for thisā€¦

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Half a year ago I bought an Alesis Vortex Wireless 2 keytar. Itā€™s nothing more than a MIDI-controller, which didnā€™t 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 Iā€™m fine using my phone / laptop with VNC. Iā€™m 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.

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Excellent !
Is communication between keytar and zynthian done trough usb or wireless ?

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Hi,

OK its Not a Real Case but it Works so far :blush:

All Drums come from the Electribe.
Channel 1-3 are from the zynthian.
Pad,Bass and the melody thing are from zynthian.

My zynthian so far is based on a Pi4 and the wave share 4 inch display.
Midi via usb also sound (Esi maya usb)

Here the video:

Stay healthy in these times !!!

Rene

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Thanks! It is wired to the usb connector internally, Iā€™ll 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.

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Awesome! What synth created those spacy high pitched sounds starting at 0:19?

The SynthV1 Birds Patch on channel 3

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What a relaxing sound. :headphones: Thanks for sharing! :+1:

Nice!! I just added it to the Wikiā€™s Sound Demos :wink:

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Yes please, Iā€™m interested with

Also, good idea to use vnc for the remote display. But isnā€™t it resource consuming ?

@guiseppi Thatā€™s a beautiful releaseā€¦ and it seems to be some very long and fine workā€¦
I guess you can be satisfiedā€¦

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Great! Electribe 2 as a sequencer for Zynthian is perfect! Iā€™m using mine too.

0

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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 itā€™s a good combination ā€¦ a lots of people didnā€™t like the Electribe due its limitations but with the zynthian what do you want more ? :blush:

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Nice build! Regarding a screenā€¦ how about re-purposing a clam-shell phone or DVD player screen? It could go where the Alesis logo is. :slight_smile:

The smallest screen that we have seen working is the 1.8" ST7735. It works but isnā€™t as comfortable to use as a larger screen. There was some discussion on offering a low resolution display for such devices but we didnā€™t 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.


I tried to make it so that it would blend in with my setup.

The display to the left and the buttons is a MIDI-controller. Since my keyboard isnā€™t 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 donā€™t really want to because itā€™s a mess.


I didnā€™t 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.

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Wow.

Amazing!

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