Teensy and 3D Printer Make Beautiful Music Together

[Otermrelik] wanted to experiment with the Teensy audio library and adapter. That, combined with his 3D printer, led to a very cool looking build of the teensypolysynth. The device looks like a little mini soundboard with sliders and 3D printed knobs. You can see (and hear) it in the video below.

The Teensy audio library supports several output devices including several built-in options and external boards like the audio adapter used here. The library does CD-quality sound, supports polyphonic playback, recording, synthesis, mixing, and more.

Even more interesting is there is an audio design tool that runs in your web browser for building the audio portion of your code graphically. Even though it is in a browser, it isn’t tied back to a server so you can run the tool offline and you don’t have to worry about your world-changing audio design leaking out on the Internet. Browsing the tool is a good way to get a feel for just how much capability the library provides.

The tool can export code you add to your project and can import it again, too, if you need to make changes. Overall, it is very slick. Of course, the library does all the work, as you can see from this simple exported code:

#include <Audio.h>
#include <Wire.h>
#include <SPI.h>
#include <SD.h>
#include <SerialFlash.h>

// GUItool: begin automatically generated code
AudioSynthWaveform waveform1; //xy=344,303
AudioInputAnalog adc1; //xy=351,227
AudioMixer4 mixer1; //xy=485,230
AudioEffectFlange flange1; //xy=657,237
AudioFilterFIR fir1; //xy=804,233
AudioOutputAnalog dac1; //xy=947,227
AudioConnection patchCord1(waveform1, 0, mixer1, 3);
AudioConnection patchCord2(adc1, 0, mixer1, 0);
AudioConnection patchCord3(mixer1, flange1);
AudioConnection patchCord4(flange1, fir1);
AudioConnection patchCord5(fir1, dac1);
// GUItool: end automatically generated code

The build details are a little light, but between the code, the pictures, and the 3D printable files you can probably figure it out. Your layout might be a little different, but you’d probably want that anyway.

We’ve talked about the Teensy audio library before, and we are still impressed. If music synthesis isn’t your thing, don’t worry. You can’t help but love this voice changer.

Filed under: Arduino Hacks, ARM, musical hacks