XENT:a low cost,zynthian system(My conception of a low-priced reproduction)

Building Zynthian
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Hello everyone!

We are the RapidPulze Team, and I’m Canny Xie, the leader and founder. We are proud to be the first and only team in China dedicated to designing innovative music devices. Over the years, our team has developed numerous designs, contributing significantly to the local music technology scene.

A few months ago, I discovered the Zynthian project and was thrilled to learn that it is open-source. I realized that Zynthian represents the perfect foundation for creating accessible and customizable music hardware. Inspired by this, we decided to design a system based on Zynthian, tailored to meet the needs of musicians in China.

Introducing the name of XENT

XENT is our initiative inspired by the Chinese transliteration of “Zynthian” “玄天” The name of “玄” comes from China’s ancient religion of Taoism,combines elements of mystery and fantasy, reflecting the expansive possibilities we envision for this project.the name of "天"means sky,It symbolizes the vast possibilities of the sky.
(i made this LOL)
:nerd_face::nerd_face::nerd_face::nerd_face::nerd_face:

Main Objective

XENT goal is to develop a lower-cost version of Zynthian without compromising on quality. In China, the majority of musicians rely on DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) for their music production, as not all can afford commercial hardware synthesizers. By utilizing XENT, we aim to provide a more affordable solution, making the Zynthian system accessible to a broader audience and fostering greater interest in open-source music hardware.

Strategy for Promotion

XENT plans to promote the Zynthian system in China through a cost-effective product strategy, similar to how the Arduino UNO has been successfully adopted. We believe that creating affordable replicas will not only help in spreading the project but also boost the sales of the original Zynthian by increasing its visibility and user base.

Current Progress

The XENT project is more than just an idea; our team has already made significant progress tailored to the Chinese market, specifically based on the V5 version of Zynthian. Here are some of the improvements we are implementing:

  1. Casing: Replacing the original metal case with acrylic or wood-cut alternatives to reduce costs and offer different aesthetic options.
  2. Size: Designing for compatibility with the EURORACK standard, allowing easier integration with existing setups.
  3. Buttons: Substituting the original silicone buttons with mechanical keyboard switches for a better tactile experience.
  4. Component Redesign: Redesigning some of the more expensive components to make the system more affordable.

Phased Development Plan

We intend to achieve our goals through several phases:

  • Phase 1:
    • Power Supply: Reworked the V5 power supply (DC-DC) using affordable yet high-performance components.
    • Button Replacement: Replaced silicone buttons with mechanical keyboard switches and redesigned the button layout.
    • Engineering Tools: Utilizing EasyEDA for our engineering work by importing original KiCad files.Progress: We have already completed a significant portion of Phase 1.
  • Future Phases:
    1. Audio Components: Replace the audio DAC and ADC with more cost-effective solutions like the PCM5102. Although I personally appreciate the original “Hi-Fi enough” design (a nod to a popular Chinese joke), affordability remains a priority.
    2. Processor Upgrade: Replace the Raspberry Pi 4 with the highly affordable RK3399 chip from China’s ROCKCHIP company. Currently, RK3399 chips can be sourced for as low as $2 USD second-hand through certain channels, compared to the Raspberry Pi PICO at $1 USD. While our team has the expertise for high-speed PCB design, this transition poses a significant engineering challenge and is not planned for the short term. Additionally, we need to consider porting applications to RK3399 and customizing the firmware package. There may also be other more suitable and cheaper Chinese chips available.

Questions and Considerations

We have a few questions regarding the open-source nature of Zynthian:

  1. Commercial Sales:
    Most of Zynthian’s hardware and software are open-source, including the PCB under the CC-BY-SA license. If we adhere to the open-source license and open-source our own designs, are we permitted to commercially sell our low-cost Zynthian version, such as XENT?
  2. Future of Zynthian Project:
    Currently, the Zynthian project appears to be an open-source hardware platform organization, with official kits sold by the original authors. In the future, do you plan to evolve into a company, or follow a path similar to the Raspberry Pi Foundation?

Our Offer to the Zynthian Community

Additionally, we are eager to contribute to the Zynthian mainline. We can provide valuable resources related to the Chinese supply chain and have extensive knowledge of affordable Chinese-made components, which can help in sourcing high-quality parts.

Join Us!

If you are interested in the XENT project, please feel free to leave a message here. We also look forward to receiving official responses to our questions regarding the permissibility of our project.

Thank you for your support!

(this is what we are doing inprogress)

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2 Likes
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Hi,

Interesting, do you have a website we can visit?

Cheers,
Maarten

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yes we have a github page,but lots of our codes are not sorted out yet.

also,we are coding for 3 years,and we will gradually turn them into perfect products.

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if you are interesting in,pls send me an email.
mastwet@foxmail.com
or
0104988com@sina.com
Chinese people usually never use the communicate tools that are commonly used in other parts of the world because the great firewall,so if you are interesting in finding us,i will show you the way.it is kind of complex.

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This is interesting. Thanks for your interest in zynthian. Be aware that there is already a lower cost option for hobbiests in the form of zynthian-mini which makes some similar design decisions. Also note that some of your design decisions may have already been considered, e.g. losing the metal enclosure changes how temperature control must be achieved.

@jofemodo is the project lead and only he can authoritatively answer many of your questions. Please liase directly with @jofemodo on this subject.

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Hi,

Please show me the way…

Cheers,
Maarten

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thank you for reply and interesting in my thought.
i had view of zynthian-mini project,and i think it is very great!
It has some better design than mine, it will have a lower price and easier way to make. But my design will be compatible with the original design, retain full color lights, and have a closer to the original user experience, while making compatibility for EURORACK. This should belong to two different designs. But this project did give me a lot of new inspiration.

Thank you all in all.

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Hi, Zynthian is also an operating system taylored for the Raspberry Pi. You will have to do some software tweaking to get your rk3399 board to work.

[edited] I’ve read your first post too quickly, and missed that you’ve mentionned this [/edited]

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Hi Canny and welcome to our community.

Based on your proposal, you seem to have been studying Zynthian and building a plan to try to improve it. This is fantastic, we all love this little project and give it a lot of love.

I will talk for myself as I’ve been working on open source software since at least 1988, so quite a bit of time. In all this time I’ve seen lots of bursting proposals arise in most of the projects I’ve workedon (linux kernel, apache, version control systems, programming languages and a long etcetera).

Your proposal seems very good: port to a new hardware architecture, promise of strong cooperation, a win-win situation, etc.

But on the other hand your relation with this community has been unexisting: zero, null, void.

As I said above, I speak for myself: I’m not used to this kind of relations in the open source world. I love cooperation, involvement, work, commitment and earning a respect from the community. I don’t like sale announcements, I know by experience that it doesn’t work like this.

This is open source (and open hardware), so if you feel you can do better I’d tell yo to go ahead. But please don’t try to sell it like you are doing something great.

I would humbly recommend you to become part of our community little by little, posting your contributions, being involved and proving your commitment. Prove that you count on us to carry away your plans, that you can convince us too, otherwise, what do you need us for?

With all due respect.
Pau

PS1: I’ve checked the github repo but found nothing about xent.

PS2: The website http://rapidpulze.xyz published in github does not exist.

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I may need to provide some further clarification.
First of all, I think some of my statements have caused misunderstandings, and I would like to apologize for that. I realize that some of my descriptions did indeed have a strong marketing tone, but that was not my intention. In my vision, XENT will primarily be an open-source project, and it may not necessarily develop commercially. As I mentioned earlier, there are some original design concepts that align better with our current usage habits.

Secondly, as stated in my title, this is currently more of an idea than a practical project. But please don’t worry; I am already working with my partners on the design. Additionally, I will be posting updates on the project in the Zynthian community. Going forward, I will only share our project progress and any questions we have, and I will refrain from making descriptions that are overly commercial or marketing-oriented.

Currently, the documentation for the XENT project (primarily focused on hardware design) is stored in a private directory on EasyEDA. I have made some recent design changes, so our progress has temporarily returned to an earlier stage. Once we complete it, we will publish it on GitHub immediately. Regarding our website and GitHub page, as I mentioned earlier, we are still organizing the past work. Once it is published, we will update our website.

I want to reiterate that I do not want to associate the open-source community with commercialization, as this does not benefit the community’s development. I simply want to pursue this project for its own sake.

Lastly, I believe I should apologize for any misunderstandings I have caused.

With my sincerest respect,
Canny Xie

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We don’t often use the commonly used international communication tools due to network latency, but there are still some solutions.

  1. Use the instant messaging tools we frequently use, such as QQ and WeChat. You will need to download QQ from the App Store and install it, then find me using my QQ number, which is 2816310942.
  2. Use Skype, which is an international communication tool that we rarely use directly. I have created a Skype group：

Thank you for your support.

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Welcome to the community and all the success to your efforts!

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now i had finish the design of pannel PCB.
the current version more like a build ,not the lowest cost way.
today and yesterday i had more inspiration from zynthian mini.but i still decide to build this version.
now the next plan is to send this to the PCB factory.

image
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I think the first main goal and the most difficult part should be to get Zynthian running on your desired plattform (RK3399). If this does not work, everything else is pointless, isn’t it?
I assume the first beta running RK3399 Zynthian (XENT) we won’t see before mid 2025 if you start to work hard with your team from now.
Of course in the end it would be fantastic to have an extrem budget Zynthian system.
But the way from having an idea to having a running system could be harder than expected - sometimes impossible. It depends on your life experience, age and real skills (and also money/budget)

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Hi Canny Xie!

Nice to meet you and really happy to see some chinese guys interested in our little project!!

You are welcome to our community where we share our knowledge with love and passion. As you probably has noted, we are a mixed crowd of engineers, musicians and nerds (some of us are all of the three!!).

Don’t hesitate to explain your ideas or ask your questions. There is nothing wrong in doing business around zynthian, but we avoid to use this forum as a “sales channel”.

Of course, when ready, you can introduce your zynthian products, but it’s better to avoid the typical “sales narrative” in this forum.

I’m personally intrigued and would love to know more about you and your background. Are you a musician? Keyboard/piano player? You seem to be a tech-savy guy too …

All the best,

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Hi jofemodo!

I’m very happy to have your attention and recognition, and I also want to thank you for bringing the Zynthian project, which is a great initiative. Yes, after being reminded by others, I understand now that I shouldn’t include too many commercial statements in the discussion group (even though it’s just my speaking style, which may sound like I’m selling something). So, moving forward in this discussion, I think we’ll focus on refining and practicing this idea.

As for your curiosity, please allow me to introduce my personal background: My primary profession is an industrial automation engineer, and I’m also an embedded software engineer. In terms of music, I’m currently an electronic music producer, creating EDM, house, and trance. I also play the piano and have served as a keyboardist in a band. So, we can definitely create some very interesting projects with Zynthian together!

Let’s go for it!

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Your concerns are valid. Building a Zynthian platform that runs on RK3399 is indeed a very difficult task, and we are all doing part-time job.which is why we have placed it in version 3.0. From what I see, most people in the community are actually excited about the idea of running it on RK3399, which is really great. Before we achieve our final goal, my friends and I need a working Zynthian system, so our first-phase goal is still to build a device that isn’t too far from the original version.

In fact, there is an interesting and useful open-source hardware community in China, founded by a company called LCSC under EasyEDA. However, Chinese creations are often disconnected from the global internet, which can be frustrating. I’m sharing this website with you all as well. I believe that with sufficient resources and references, building this project is not impossible.
（just like the aliexpress is taobao in china mainland lol）:joy: :laughing:
pls visit oshwhub.com to find something interesting!

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Sack the Zynthian. These things are sooo frickin cute!
image

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Well, porting Zynthian to a new CPU is a challenge. I’ve seen that with all the RasPi clones out there: they never got full support.
Optimizing the hardware is good, but the vision for XENT will not bring the Zyanthian project anywhere. And it potentially diverges energy away from the project.
Hey, it’s open-source: so do you thing and respect the licence!

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Yes, after reconsidering my goals, I believe this project should be divided into several key parts:

  1. Introducing something truly innovative, such as optimizations for Eurorack. We still have many ideas in this area.
  2. Exploring the possibility of porting.
  3. The low-cost solution has already been clearly defined. In fact, the cost control achieved by the Mini version far surpasses that of simply switching the main controller in the regular version. I think the Zynthian Mini has set a good example, and designing with the Mini as a reference is highly suitable.
  4. Additionally, XENT will be a completely new open-source branch managed by us at Rapidpulze, so it won’t affect the progress of the original branch. For innovations that are proven to be stable, we will submit them to the main branch.