Thanks for all the kind words and feedback. There are some comments expressing interest in supporting a Kickstarter etc. If you're interested in receiving updates you can leave your email here:
If I may submit an extremely pedantic music nerd bug report: at 46s in the video demo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qboig3a0YS0&t=46s), the display should read Bb instead of A#, as the key of C minor is written with flats :)
(The precise rule is that a diatonic scale must use each letter name for exactly one note, e.g. you can't have both G and G# in the same key, and you can't skip B. This has many important properties that make music easier to read and reason about, such as allowing written music to specify "all the E's, A's, and B's are flat" once at the start of the piece instead of having to clutter the page with redundant sharps or flats everywhere.)
That's one of the coolest parts of HN! This post was posted five days ago and went totally unnoticed by the community, probably, even OP has forgotten about it. Thankfully, HN had what is called Second Chance (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308) and since this post is a masterclass in building a physical product, the mods decided to bring it back by featuring it on the front page, where it finally got the attention it deserved. A true masterpiece indeed!
One thing I haven't seen in the comments so far is any comment about the knobs and sliders. The young kids I know take perverse delight in pulling off knobs and throwing them. Make sure that they are glued down!
If you ever did this as a larger Kickstarter type project, I wonder if it'd be possible to get stepped faders so you could physically click-click-click-click through each semitone.
This crosses such a rare line of being something that both children and adults would love to have around to play with. Even though I know you didn’t build it to be a product.
Looks amazing! Reminds me of a funny reddit thread about a man who built a fiber optic star ceiling for his daughter. The top comment was "First child?". :)
How are these, are they worth the money? I have seen these before, but thought they might be crappy "jokes". However, if they are decent, I would love to play around with them.
What I love about this is how physical it is.
So yeah, there's some board running DSP. but the design is amazing.
It really relates to some recent posts also in HN about many objects loosing their physical UX. from an age of having buttons and tactical interfaces, everything became more touch based / app based which indeed cut price and allows easier updating. but also lacks some romance which is exactly what this device shows.
Agreed. That's half the reason that no matter how accurate a virtual synthesizer can be (like the Mac App Moog Model D), there's just no substitute for being able to physically fiddle the knobs and dials.
Amazing the things we do for our little ones. I built a toddler-friendly keyboard for my son. He's still playing some form of piano 6 years later, no longer with his fists or feet.
Thank you for that closing paragraph in your article. Every time I read something online that tries to bend it into some "profound" lesson, or integrate it into the writer's personal brand, I throw up a little. This is most egregious on LinkedIn, and why I avoid that place unless I have to find a new job or something.
This is phenomenal, but my biggest question is (which is probably a more of a long-term one that comes from genuine curiosity/fascination, not doubt): does she use it/enjoy it? I'm so curious to see what happens over time. Does she learn the functions of these buttons, years before having words for what they're doing? Does she write some music? Does she grow up expecting things with knobs to be this interactive/creative? SO cool!
3-year-olds actually have quite a vocabulary, so they can certainly talk about what the knobs are doing, maybe just not as accurately as adults.
Regarding discovering functionality: The author mentions Montessori stuff, and the philosophy there is unguided discovery, "let them figure out by themselves". Not sure if that's how the author is planning to use this too, though.
It's not kid friendly, but in case anybody's interested I just wrote up how I made a simple "hardware" synth by bodging together a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and I2S audio module, total cost around £10 on Amazon UK.
The hardware's very cheap and easy. The "default" synthesis is pretty simple but also pretty hackable (in Rust) if you want to customize it.
I did some similar playing around with an ESP32 and I2S a few years ago (lockdowns were an odd time). Where I seem to remember getting stuck was how to get the phase to line up, so that each sample looped at a zero-crossing point (which is different for each frequency).
Great finish. I was busy designing and soldering the prototype synthesizer during the summer, but I had to put it on hold because my baby was born in September.
I had the same problem back then: injection molding is quite expensive to start. But you could consider a more creative approach: using a PCB directly as the panel, such as a TE's Pocket Operator. Korg also has this solution for some educational products. Alternatively, you could use 3D printing; there are many inexpensive services in China. CNC doesn't have the mold-making issue, but it's more expensive and doesn't seem suitable for children.
Another interesting point: after my child was born, I didn't have much time for my sound work. But recently, I was surprised to find that I spend most of my time playing white noise on Glicol (http://glicol.org/) and it works great for my kid.
I've been learning CAD, 3d printing, PCB design and brushing up on my embedded programming... all with the goal of being able to build toys for/with my son. It's incredible how accessible it is in todays world, made possible by these advancements:
- incredibly powerful and cheap microprocessors (esp-32)
- Fast, high precision desktop 3d printers
- Affordable small batch PCB manufacturing
- LLM's to advise on circuit design and help with embedded programming
Would you have any interest selling a non-comm license to the PCB, f3d files and source code? My 1.5yo son would absolutely love this!
Same, I recently got into Arduino so i could build a toy idea I had for my kid (a sort of "keepy-uppy" paddle game). I've always avoided Arduino projects because I don't like to code in my spare time (its my day job) and also learning how to wire things seemed daunting -- LLMs solved both of those problems for me (Claude's wiring tutorials are awesome and the code is simple enough that it can one-shot it).
I also bought a Bambu A1 3D Printer and it is unexpectedly way more fun and useful than I thought it would be. I designed the toy in TinkerCAD and it printed out beautifully (I also have been printing out lots of other toys and yes, useful things for around the house and for other projects).
Next steps are learning Fusion 360 and figuring out PCBs -- That also seemed daunting to me but its nice to see other amateur hobbyists are seemingly picking it up with not much difficulty.
If I have zero experience designing PCBs but wanted to do a similarly (non)-complex one, how much of a tall order would that be? In my completely made-up mental model, I'm guessing I just take the parts I've already breadboarded, look them up in some sidebar, and drag and drop them around, snapping to nice clean spacing, and then connect all the various pins together and have it automatically organize things? We're not going for perfect here. Just "Baby's first PCB" that at least works.
And then when I have one designed, how much would it cost to get made and sent to me if I was okay if it took a month?
But most importantly: how do I build personal confidence that I'm not shipping a potato off to be printed? Is there a community I could ask for a review from?
Hi, your mental model is essentially correct, though it took me a good few evenings over a couple of weeks to get the workflow down in fusion 360. The electronics retailer will usually have the footprint and 3d model available on the component page. You can then import it, define which pins you want connected to each other in the footprint and in the PCB editor you can drag the routes (wires) to connect them.
Printing is way cheaper than I initially thought it would be - I paid £35 or so, including delivery and 5 of them arrived in 5 days. You can get cheaper delivery though. Also most of that cost is shipping and the setup fee - the marginal cost for each additional PCB print in the order is on the order of low single digit dollars.
Tbh my circuit was fairly simple so I just took a bit of a chance (and some extra care wiring things up). I think there’s a subreddit where people give feedback though I haven’t submitted anything.
As a hobbyist, I have had a good experience using EasyEDA [0]. It's free to use, with the caveat that you are pretty locked in to their PCB ordering service from China. However, pricing is crazy good, like <$50 total for 5 PCB's (although there will be tariffs).
Regarding your mental model, it's more like a 2-step process. First, you draw the netlist, which is the electrical circuit diagram. It's this stage you ensure there are no short-circuits, etc. Then in the second stage, you drag-drop the components to the physical layout you want. The software then has an auto-router that references the netlist and automatically generates the first pass of PCB traces. You can tweak them if you wish. The EDA software also has a rules engine that checks for correct trace spacing, vias, etc.
For a "baby's first PCB", I bet you have more skills than you realize and I would encourage you to just give it a shot. Also, if you make a small mistake, you can manually "bodge" the board by cutting wrong traces with an exacto knife and/or soldering wires to the pads.
Everything else just comes from experience! If you're staying in the sub-kHz (audio) range, you probably won't need the crazy high-frequency tricks/trace capacitance/trace-length-matching concerns.
For another data point: last week I ordered my first PCBs from JLCBCB. 2 fully assembled (parts already soldered) and 3 bare. $40 for the boards themselves, $40 for shipping, and $20 for US Tariffs, for total $100. Should take a week to arrive, shipping's cheaper if your willing to wait a month.
Re help: I asked for some help on libera ##electronics. I think there are larger communities on reddit that would also take a pass over designs.
My impression is that for straightforward circuits (not very high frequency or high power) you can get away with almost anything as far as layout goes. You punch in some generous setting for spacing of traces etc in the CAD software and it does some basic validation. (Are all the parts connected, not too close?).
I used KiCAD. It works well, though for assembly EasyEDA is probably lower friction. I had to dig around to find the right footprints for certain parts.
Depends on complexity. The article gives a price, for 5 PCBs which isn't unreasonable. However this was a simple PCB that used a lot more physical space than it would need to (for this application most of the space was needed because of the physical space the buttons/sliders needed so it was needed so this isn't a criticism). If you want to make a small PCB much more work is needed. This was a few analog sliders and buttons - no high speed digital data, if you are designing a computer (even Apple II level complexity) it is a lot harder. If you are designing a radio there are a lot of complexity. If you want to get this FCC (whatever your local government is) certified there is a lot more complexity.
This project is something that should be easy for someone with basic CAD experience. However many projects require a lot more complexity, so don't think that because most people could figure this PCB out in a day make you think anyone can do more complex PCBs, things get complex fast.
If the board is small (10x10cm or less) it will be almost completely free, like single-digit dollars, through somewhere like JLPCB. So I’d say don’t worry too much about that, just jump in and try!
As for actually designing, it’s a little more complicated than that but not by much. I did my first pcbs with KiCAD ~5 years ago by pretty much just guessing and googling where things were. Completely feasible if you have 0 background experience.
jmb99 already said the part about cost/price. I just made a PCB for someone’s Halloween costume and it was only the 4th PCB I ever made. (So far I’ve used PCBWay for all 4 but since I’m in the US I also ended up doing a rush order from US-based Osh Park because I was panicking about how long the shipping was taking. Tariff situation has made shipping from China to the US more complicated. I found out DKRed, which is part of DigiKey, also makes PCBs in the US.)
For designing it I’d check out a kicad 9 tutorial playlist. You don’t need to know everything but it helps to know the right things, like how to run the design rules checker to make sure your PCB layout conforms to your schematic. There are a bunch to choose from but this one seems good: https://youtu.be/4YSZwcUSgJo
I haven’t done this but you can also try submitting your PCB design to /r/PrintedCircuitBoard subreddit for review, and they can also answer questions there.
The "Dato Duo" is also a synth aimed at kids. It allows 2 kids to play together. it is made by a Dutch company called Dato (https://dato.mu). Their latest musical invention the "Dato Drum" had a successful Kickstarter and is shipping now. This drum machine allows even more kids to play together.
PS: As the owner of a Dato Duo I can share you a little secret: it's also fun for adults :)
Love my Datos (also own the drum now)! My kids are jamming with them regularly. Only issue: my youngest LOVES the "Crush" button and just holds it the whole time. Not easy for noise sensitive parents :)
I was looking for some synths for my less-than-two-years kid, after seeing their face light up when I fiddle with my Lofi 12 XT in front of them.
I had all these criterias :
-Something without any screens
-Something simple enough
-Something that could withstand some rough play
I looked and looked, was considering proper Aira Compact synths, but ended up with the antiquity of the Bliptronic 5000 from Thinkgeek.
https://youtu.be/6rCfhF-fNb4
They love it, the buttons are beyond fun to them, but the knobs are quite hard to turn for a little kid (1st world problem, I know)
I felt they were too young for a Blipbox, and I also bought an Orba 2, we'll see how that one goes.
But I dreamed of such a device, with easy to turn knobs, and colorful display, something simple to modulate sounds and just hear melodies. Seeing how you created it is both inspiring and discouraging, as someone with limited free time and electrical knowledge, but, you never know !
Putting aside the beauty of both the synth and its purpose, what I'm curious about is the learning process in making this. The running theme is that you picked up several new skills 'from cold'. That in itself is impressive enough. How did you approach learning:
- the necessary basic electronics;
- PCB design;
- 3D CAD;
- your particular iterative process,
among other things? I get the impression you built things incrementally, observed what happens and learnt via that feedback loop? Maybe others could share their own feedback loops, too.
I've been reflecting on this a bit. I found it very useful to have a well-defined project and focus the learning time on things that are necessary for completing it. Having a background in coding was useful because I find you end up developing a knack for isolating parts of systems and figuring out how to work on small parts that end up fitting together.
I therefore focused initially on simply getting readings from a single potentiometer; if I could do that then I felt pretty confident I could read from four of them. If I could generate a midi message I was pretty confident I could send it to something that could read it etc.
When I started on the PCB design I had a simple circuit already so it was a case of translating that onto a board.
I didn't get too deep into any of the various parts but I found that it gave me a birds-eye view of the whole process and I now feel confident in isolating parts of them and 'zooming in' to them and refining them, building on the foundation I've developed.
Hmm, very cool project and maybe just the inspiration I need.
I bought a Baby Einstein Magic Touch Guitar for a friend’s daughter a couple of years ago, and while it was okay as a toy, it was disappointing as a musical instrument because the chords it plays are badly chosen. It’s basically impossible to play along with most songs.
I’ve had the back burnered idea to buy another and improve it; maybe I will now, following a variation on your approach.
We have similar interests! I've been working on a DIY animatronic project that is mostly vibe-coded using Sonnet 4.5. It's my first electronics project. So far, I got the Ultrasonic Sensor to trigger led when object is less than 2 feet away. I set up a sound player and the components fried when I started the device. I have to redo all of the wiring for the sound setup again. I only have one of three sound modules that isn't bricked.
The comments in this thread reveal a community of parents who are aspiring builders of high tech devices for their children. I think this community need a discord.
Cool! Reminds of the Music From Outer Space synth in which the designer makes the claim that it "can actually get a child away from a television" and includes a video to prove it.
I want to commend you for making this actually musical. Too often these basic synths aimed at kids are little more than a noise maker unless you really know what you are doing.
My spouse and I are into music and we are pretty serious choristers. We have our first little one on the way this December, and we definitely want to expose them to making music from a very young age. Your synth looks like an excellent way to do that, as it does not seem possible to get it in a state where it's just making horrible noises, every state will be some new pleasant little jingle.
Were you aware of the Dato Duo (https://dato.mu/)? It's very cool for kids, except for the fairly steep price point.
The advantage is that it's limited, so it greatly reduces the wall of difficulty to manage to get some 'nice-sounding' music (mostly the restriction to the pentatonic scale). However, kids still manage to find the most horrible-sounding settings, and insist on keeping them as is...
There's a fun podcast by Arman Bohn/Distropolis (who himself has made some cool small-batch hardware synths) where he interviews makers of small hardware synths, https://open.spotify.com/show/30USGHPeGQ9ZyWQDyRnfcv might be of interest.
that's great! may your daughter make great use of it!
love the fact that your step sequencer even has a display to tell you what note you are adjusting to and from. i've always found that tuning synths and sequencers both analog and digital can be a pain because you can forget the note (or you don't have a good set of ears or perfect pitch) even if the result sounds good.
Wow! Looks great and very inspiring. Great idea to make separate components that can be connected - something like a drum machine, sequencer, maybe even a chord synthesizer? It can be constrained such that you are always diatonic, you could have a mode knob too.
Jamming with other people can be a life changing experience, and to do that as a child would be a great privilege to have.
Yes exactly, it would be great to be able to sync the clocks so they all ‘just work’ together. And maybe also a module that gives all the other synth parameters for the more advanced user too. I say it’s for my daughter, but I actually would love this too.
The other day I came across a post on Facebook that was just some guy grousing that the new Teenage Engineering gadget looked like "a baby's activity center". And now we've come full circle: a baby's activity center that's actually not far off from Teenage Engineering kit.
What a beautiful and charming project. Kudos for taking it all the way from zero to one with such a polished design. That's no small feat. I've built prototypes for eurorack and even with some simplifying constraints it's a lot of work.
There's a lot of talent on display here. For someone who has never done any of this I'm so impressed with the degree of finish and care as well as the functionality of the device. It even sounds pleasant. Dad of the year award!
Kids music toys are often just purely toys tap a button, make a sound... But the skill ceiling could be so much higher, offering the ability to learn and express themselves more. Awesome work.
For anyone who likes the idea of better music "toys" for their kids (i.e. not toys at all, but still easy to use) but doesn't have the capacity to build stuff like this, my kids and I love the Korg Koassilator: https://www.korg.com/us/products/dj/kaossilator2/
You can usually get them on eBay for USD$60 - 70. You do need to bring your own speakers, but a pair of cheap PC speakers are good enough, and it's a good start on creating a whole synth + effects chain.
This one is a little more difficult to figure out for the kids as it is a "modifier" in the chain and they haven't quite wrapped their head around that concept yet. But still, it works great, has lots of features, and is really inexpensive for such a thing.
One of my favorite kids music toy is a mini piano where you have to replay one among 5-6 melodies (each melody is 5-10 notes that you have to memorize by ear — no lights involved) to unlock a little happy sound. This toy managed to keep both, dad and kid busy for a while.
Wow, what an amazing demo for such a simple synth. Great work! If you ever start a Kickstarter, I’d be happy to donate. If it inspires some kid out there to get into music production, it’s a win for me :)
Your daughter is so lucky! I meaning the physical UX is very reminiscent of teenage engineering, looks great!
The more I was scrolling down the article the more I hoped for an « order » button :)
This is great. I did a similar thing when my kids were young (revived an old, dead Kawai synth with a Raspberry Pi and sound fonts), but doing it with semi-discrete circuits seems a lot more fun.
Regarding case material for productizing, you could consider a combination of plywood and bent sheet metal, eg like a Moog. Also check out dato.mu for a few examples of kid proof synth enclosures.
I'm a 44 year old man and I would love this - for years I've tried to dabble with music with much lack of success - but this looks really fun to play with. Great job.
If you want a synth you can buy that has a similar playing style, you could check out the Modern Sounds Pluto: https://www.modernsounds.co/pluto (the original run is sold out but you can find them on ebay/reverb)
It's two of these 4-note step sequencers with some fun timing randomness. Similar to the OP's synth it uses knobs to set pitches but the knobs are picking notes from a specific key so they always sound good together. It's a lot of fun to play and doesn't require any musical knowledge!
The problem with music is you can't dabble. You need to dedicate half an hour per day for a few weeks before you reach the point where you are not terrible. You need years of dedicated practice before you can call yourself good. Finding that time is hard. Still making your own music is run and so I encourage you to press through.
There are also free software synths and DAWs available. GarageBand is the obvious one if you use macOS. I had lots of fun with that and with NanoStudio on iPad. I also own a Pocket Operator, which is fun and very mobile, but a bit pricey.
Go grab a Teenage Engineering Pocket Operator, it's definitely worth a try !
I personally recommend the PO-33 (KO!), it is fun and easy to play with :)
Makes me wonder what the difference, in definition, is between a sequencer and a synthesizer? Is this really a synthesizer, or is it really a sequencer?
A synthesizer is generally a higher-level ready-to-use product containing any number of oscillators, sequencers, and other circuits and bells and whistles under the hood. A device with an oscillator and a sequencer qualifies as a basic synth.
At a lower levels you find modules like sequencer, oscillator, etc. They are generally not used by themselves: you plug a sequencer into an oscillator to make use of it, just like a standalone oscillator by itself simply makes a continuous noise that gets old quickly. A synth does that connection for you and exposes the controls.
(To make things even more fun, the lines between lower-level audio modules are often blurred. For example, the difference between a sequencer and an oscillator can be best summed up as: the former is commonly designed for unipolar control rate signal change where you can specify exact level per step, while the latter is designed for bipolar audio rate signal change between two predetermined extremes—however, as the “designed for” hints, you could configure some sequencers to output a bipolar signal changing so fast it is audible, just like you could run a square wave oscillator so slowly that it becomes a 2-step sequencer.)
The linked project is both. A synth makes sounds, and a sequencer controls the sound over time usually with note on/off data. This sequencer has 4 steps before looping back to the beginning. To simplify, think of a sequencer as the music box drum and the synth as the tines in a music box.
A sequencer is always in steps. A synthesizer has a signal generator and can modulate a single step. This toy is both a synthesizer and a sequencer, but since you cannot toggle the 4 steps off, it will always be a sequencer in addition to the synthesizer
Kinda funny but my adult son has taken an interest in guitars and keyboard and that has me working on MIDI routers with AVR-8 and building an ESP32 based synth module.
This is awesome. Just awesome. Love that it looks like a baby toy and packs enough punch to get a kid about 20 years up the line of music understanding.
The surfaces you're seeing in the pictures are almost all the "bottom" surface that was printed directly on the build plate. It basically just picks up the texture of the build plate and is otherwise smooth. That's actually a fairly bumpy build plate they printed it on (which lots of people like for aesthetic reasons).
That said modern 3D printers are good at producing pretty nice parts these days, especially if you print with small layer heights. You might be underestimating the possible quality of 3d printed objects.
Same. It's a solid four-note ARP that sticks to a fixed set of musical keys. You literally can't make bad sounding music with this.
A more grown-up version of this would be 16 notes, with variable length patterns (4-16?), and a "swing" function. A little bit of I/O mux under the hood and I bet this design could be expanded in that way. Or maybe you just daisy-chain multiple sequencers?
random_moonwalk|3 months ago
https://tally.so/r/Y55dXv
Thanks again - this was a bit of a surprise!
NobodyNada|3 months ago
If I may submit an extremely pedantic music nerd bug report: at 46s in the video demo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qboig3a0YS0&t=46s), the display should read Bb instead of A#, as the key of C minor is written with flats :)
(The precise rule is that a diatonic scale must use each letter name for exactly one note, e.g. you can't have both G and G# in the same key, and you can't skip B. This has many important properties that make music easier to read and reason about, such as allowing written music to specify "all the E's, A's, and B's are flat" once at the start of the piece instead of having to clutter the page with redundant sharps or flats everywhere.)
redbell|3 months ago
That's one of the coolest parts of HN! This post was posted five days ago and went totally unnoticed by the community, probably, even OP has forgotten about it. Thankfully, HN had what is called Second Chance (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308) and since this post is a masterclass in building a physical product, the mods decided to bring it back by featuring it on the front page, where it finally got the attention it deserved. A true masterpiece indeed!
the_arun|3 months ago
peteforde|3 months ago
One thing I haven't seen in the comments so far is any comment about the knobs and sliders. The young kids I know take perverse delight in pulling off knobs and throwing them. Make sure that they are glued down!
Nition|3 months ago
jbl0ndie|3 months ago
Have you come across soft tooling for injection moulding? It's a lower cost, short run approach using much less durable moulds from various materials.
tietjens|3 months ago
Dowwie|3 months ago
MrsPeaches|3 months ago
I’ve got some experience with small batch production and I’ve written an email. Check your spam!
LooseMarmoset|3 months ago
markatkinson|3 months ago
nixass|3 months ago
/s
solfox|3 months ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/8g8pce/fiberoptic_star...
Brajeshwar|3 months ago
gwbas1c|3 months ago
fainpul|3 months ago
For kid-friendly toys, yes. But for older users not necessarily:
https://teenage.engineering/products/po
NoSalt|3 months ago
kentbrew|3 months ago
https://www.instructables.com/Vacuum-Forming-for-Free/
elric|3 months ago
But neither injection molding nor carpentry will protect a synth from a child dunking it in a puddle of water.
speedgoose|3 months ago
One has a silicon case and is nicer to use though.
rock_artist|3 months ago
brudgers|3 months ago
https://blipblox.com
throwaway675309|3 months ago
afandian|3 months ago
https://blog.afandian.com/2019/09/ux-for-toddlers/
beAbU|3 months ago
newtwilly|3 months ago
thomasqbrady|3 months ago
blauditore|3 months ago
Regarding discovering functionality: The author mentions Montessori stuff, and the philosophy there is unguided discovery, "let them figure out by themselves". Not sure if that's how the author is planning to use this too, though.
Joeboy|3 months ago
The hardware's very cheap and easy. The "default" synthesis is pretty simple but also pretty hackable (in Rust) if you want to customize it.
https://github.com/Joeboy/oxynth/
afandian|3 months ago
I did some similar playing around with an ESP32 and I2S a few years ago (lockdowns were an odd time). Where I seem to remember getting stuck was how to get the phase to line up, so that each sample looped at a zero-crossing point (which is different for each frequency).
For the lazy, what did you do?
https://gitlab.com/afandian/melodicornamuse/-/blob/main/melo...
chaosprint|3 months ago
I had the same problem back then: injection molding is quite expensive to start. But you could consider a more creative approach: using a PCB directly as the panel, such as a TE's Pocket Operator. Korg also has this solution for some educational products. Alternatively, you could use 3D printing; there are many inexpensive services in China. CNC doesn't have the mold-making issue, but it's more expensive and doesn't seem suitable for children.
Another interesting point: after my child was born, I didn't have much time for my sound work. But recently, I was surprised to find that I spend most of my time playing white noise on Glicol (http://glicol.org/) and it works great for my kid.
``` o: noise 42 >> lpf ~mod 1 >> mul ~mod3
~mod: sin ~mod2 >> mul 200 >> add 1000
~mod2: sin 0.1 >> mul 0.04 >> add 0.1
~mod3: sin 0.04 >> mul 0.3 >> add 0.8 ```
Good luck with kickstarter!
giancarlostoro|3 months ago
bigiain|3 months ago
cjonas|3 months ago
- incredibly powerful and cheap microprocessors (esp-32) - Fast, high precision desktop 3d printers - Affordable small batch PCB manufacturing - LLM's to advise on circuit design and help with embedded programming
Would you have any interest selling a non-comm license to the PCB, f3d files and source code? My 1.5yo son would absolutely love this!
mcrider|3 months ago
I also bought a Bambu A1 3D Printer and it is unexpectedly way more fun and useful than I thought it would be. I designed the toy in TinkerCAD and it printed out beautifully (I also have been printing out lots of other toys and yes, useful things for around the house and for other projects).
Next steps are learning Fusion 360 and figuring out PCBs -- That also seemed daunting to me but its nice to see other amateur hobbyists are seemingly picking it up with not much difficulty.
Waterluvian|3 months ago
And then when I have one designed, how much would it cost to get made and sent to me if I was okay if it took a month?
But most importantly: how do I build personal confidence that I'm not shipping a potato off to be printed? Is there a community I could ask for a review from?
random_moonwalk|3 months ago
Printing is way cheaper than I initially thought it would be - I paid £35 or so, including delivery and 5 of them arrived in 5 days. You can get cheaper delivery though. Also most of that cost is shipping and the setup fee - the marginal cost for each additional PCB print in the order is on the order of low single digit dollars.
Tbh my circuit was fairly simple so I just took a bit of a chance (and some extra care wiring things up). I think there’s a subreddit where people give feedback though I haven’t submitted anything.
TheJoeMan|3 months ago
Regarding your mental model, it's more like a 2-step process. First, you draw the netlist, which is the electrical circuit diagram. It's this stage you ensure there are no short-circuits, etc. Then in the second stage, you drag-drop the components to the physical layout you want. The software then has an auto-router that references the netlist and automatically generates the first pass of PCB traces. You can tweak them if you wish. The EDA software also has a rules engine that checks for correct trace spacing, vias, etc.
For a "baby's first PCB", I bet you have more skills than you realize and I would encourage you to just give it a shot. Also, if you make a small mistake, you can manually "bodge" the board by cutting wrong traces with an exacto knife and/or soldering wires to the pads.
Everything else just comes from experience! If you're staying in the sub-kHz (audio) range, you probably won't need the crazy high-frequency tricks/trace capacitance/trace-length-matching concerns.
[0] https://easyeda.com/
tmerr|3 months ago
Re help: I asked for some help on libera ##electronics. I think there are larger communities on reddit that would also take a pass over designs.
My impression is that for straightforward circuits (not very high frequency or high power) you can get away with almost anything as far as layout goes. You punch in some generous setting for spacing of traces etc in the CAD software and it does some basic validation. (Are all the parts connected, not too close?).
I used KiCAD. It works well, though for assembly EasyEDA is probably lower friction. I had to dig around to find the right footprints for certain parts.
bluGill|3 months ago
This project is something that should be easy for someone with basic CAD experience. However many projects require a lot more complexity, so don't think that because most people could figure this PCB out in a day make you think anyone can do more complex PCBs, things get complex fast.
jmb99|3 months ago
As for actually designing, it’s a little more complicated than that but not by much. I did my first pcbs with KiCAD ~5 years ago by pretty much just guessing and googling where things were. Completely feasible if you have 0 background experience.
unknown|3 months ago
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drivers99|3 months ago
For designing it I’d check out a kicad 9 tutorial playlist. You don’t need to know everything but it helps to know the right things, like how to run the design rules checker to make sure your PCB layout conforms to your schematic. There are a bunch to choose from but this one seems good: https://youtu.be/4YSZwcUSgJo
I haven’t done this but you can also try submitting your PCB design to /r/PrintedCircuitBoard subreddit for review, and they can also answer questions there.
BjornW|3 months ago
Reminds me of the Dato Duo I have.
The "Dato Duo" is also a synth aimed at kids. It allows 2 kids to play together. it is made by a Dutch company called Dato (https://dato.mu). Their latest musical invention the "Dato Drum" had a successful Kickstarter and is shipping now. This drum machine allows even more kids to play together.
PS: As the owner of a Dato Duo I can share you a little secret: it's also fun for adults :)
perelin|3 months ago
BigTTYGothGF|3 months ago
beAbU|3 months ago
As long as it's not battery powered, it was on our "approved" list.
They love us (the kids. The parents... not so much I guess).
We have our first one due in a couple of weeks, and I guess we'll prepare ourselves for retribution!
random_moonwalk|3 months ago
NoSalt|3 months ago
My son and I are also fascinated by the sweet, sweet synth sound, but as I have no discernible talent, we went this route:
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Nts1Mk2--korg-nutekt...
Which, unfortunately, has a HUGE learning curve in terms of operation.
Geste|3 months ago
I was looking for some synths for my less-than-two-years kid, after seeing their face light up when I fiddle with my Lofi 12 XT in front of them.
I had all these criterias : -Something without any screens -Something simple enough -Something that could withstand some rough play
I looked and looked, was considering proper Aira Compact synths, but ended up with the antiquity of the Bliptronic 5000 from Thinkgeek. https://youtu.be/6rCfhF-fNb4 They love it, the buttons are beyond fun to them, but the knobs are quite hard to turn for a little kid (1st world problem, I know)
I felt they were too young for a Blipbox, and I also bought an Orba 2, we'll see how that one goes.
But I dreamed of such a device, with easy to turn knobs, and colorful display, something simple to modulate sounds and just hear melodies. Seeing how you created it is both inspiring and discouraging, as someone with limited free time and electrical knowledge, but, you never know !
sunray2|3 months ago
- the necessary basic electronics;
- PCB design;
- 3D CAD;
- your particular iterative process,
among other things? I get the impression you built things incrementally, observed what happens and learnt via that feedback loop? Maybe others could share their own feedback loops, too.
random_moonwalk|3 months ago
I therefore focused initially on simply getting readings from a single potentiometer; if I could do that then I felt pretty confident I could read from four of them. If I could generate a midi message I was pretty confident I could send it to something that could read it etc.
When I started on the PCB design I had a simple circuit already so it was a case of translating that onto a board.
I didn't get too deep into any of the various parts but I found that it gave me a birds-eye view of the whole process and I now feel confident in isolating parts of them and 'zooming in' to them and refining them, building on the foundation I've developed.
mft_|3 months ago
I bought a Baby Einstein Magic Touch Guitar for a friend’s daughter a couple of years ago, and while it was okay as a toy, it was disappointing as a musical instrument because the chords it plays are badly chosen. It’s basically impossible to play along with most songs.
I’ve had the back burnered idea to buy another and improve it; maybe I will now, following a variation on your approach.
bbhi|3 months ago
gregsadetsky|3 months ago
https://sensorium.github.io/Mozzi/
Dowwie|3 months ago
The comments in this thread reveal a community of parents who are aspiring builders of high tech devices for their children. I think this community need a discord.
JoeDaDude|3 months ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6M_KrZByz4
MFOS Weird Sound Generator
https://musicfromouterspace.com/index.php?CATPARTNO=WSG001&P...
beAbU|3 months ago
My spouse and I are into music and we are pretty serious choristers. We have our first little one on the way this December, and we definitely want to expose them to making music from a very young age. Your synth looks like an excellent way to do that, as it does not seem possible to get it in a state where it's just making horrible noises, every state will be some new pleasant little jingle.
Bravo!
nielsbot|3 months ago
He builds beautiful, colorful, retro-futuristic audio-visual art pieces Many are synths.
_adamb|3 months ago
What should I make that captures the awesomeness of this project without the insanity? Hmm...
gulan28|3 months ago
woolion|3 months ago
The advantage is that it's limited, so it greatly reduces the wall of difficulty to manage to get some 'nice-sounding' music (mostly the restriction to the pentatonic scale). However, kids still manage to find the most horrible-sounding settings, and insist on keeping them as is...
eat_your_potato|3 months ago
dimatura|3 months ago
NickC25|3 months ago
love the fact that your step sequencer even has a display to tell you what note you are adjusting to and from. i've always found that tuning synths and sequencers both analog and digital can be a pain because you can forget the note (or you don't have a good set of ears or perfect pitch) even if the result sounds good.
0xdada|3 months ago
Jamming with other people can be a life changing experience, and to do that as a child would be a great privilege to have.
random_moonwalk|3 months ago
andoando|3 months ago
greasegum|3 months ago
random_moonwalk|3 months ago
bitwize|3 months ago
tapland|3 months ago
evmaki|3 months ago
Best of luck with your Kickstarter!
thenthenthen|3 months ago
random_moonwalk|3 months ago
I used Chroma Cap knobs: https://store.djtechtools.com/products/chroma-caps-knobs-and...
jacquesm|3 months ago
yzydserd|3 months ago
random_moonwalk|3 months ago
endorphine|3 months ago
What kind of hardware would you suggest (preferably something with Rust!bindings). Is the one used in the original post a good starting point?
I've minimal to no experience with embedded.
habosa|3 months ago
amatecha|3 months ago
dinobones|3 months ago
Kids music toys are often just purely toys tap a button, make a sound... But the skill ceiling could be so much higher, offering the ability to learn and express themselves more. Awesome work.
moron4hire|3 months ago
You can usually get them on eBay for USD$60 - 70. You do need to bring your own speakers, but a pair of cheap PC speakers are good enough, and it's a good start on creating a whole synth + effects chain.
Speaking of which, there is also the Mini Kaos Pad, which is a dynamic effects processor: https://www.korg.com/us/products/dj/mini_kaoss_pad2/
This one is a little more difficult to figure out for the kids as it is a "modifier" in the chain and they haven't quite wrapped their head around that concept yet. But still, it works great, has lots of features, and is really inexpensive for such a thing.
And finally, they have a number of these mini-synths that are in the USD$30 - 50 range that are a ton of fun: https://www.korg.com/us/products/dj/monotron_duo/
amenghra|3 months ago
helsontaveras18|3 months ago
rmnclmnt|3 months ago
dmd|3 months ago
rcarmo|3 months ago
fiatpandas|3 months ago
Thorrez|3 months ago
tanepiper|3 months ago
turbotim|3 months ago
haldean|3 months ago
It's two of these 4-note step sequencers with some fun timing randomness. Similar to the OP's synth it uses knobs to set pitches but the knobs are picking notes from a specific key so they always sound good together. It's a lot of fun to play and doesn't require any musical knowledge!
bluGill|3 months ago
fainpul|3 months ago
0xMalotru|3 months ago
gwbas1c|3 months ago
Yes, I'm splitting hairs about semantics.
strogonoff|3 months ago
At a lower levels you find modules like sequencer, oscillator, etc. They are generally not used by themselves: you plug a sequencer into an oscillator to make use of it, just like a standalone oscillator by itself simply makes a continuous noise that gets old quickly. A synth does that connection for you and exposes the controls.
(To make things even more fun, the lines between lower-level audio modules are often blurred. For example, the difference between a sequencer and an oscillator can be best summed up as: the former is commonly designed for unipolar control rate signal change where you can specify exact level per step, while the latter is designed for bipolar audio rate signal change between two predetermined extremes—however, as the “designed for” hints, you could configure some sequencers to output a bipolar signal changing so fast it is audible, just like you could run a square wave oscillator so slowly that it becomes a 2-step sequencer.)
oidar|3 months ago
butlike|3 months ago
PaulDavisThe1st|3 months ago
It is a synthesiser AND it is a step sequencer.
dave_sid|3 months ago
PaulHoule|3 months ago
danvoell|3 months ago
jeremydavid|3 months ago
simgt|3 months ago
gpm|3 months ago
That said modern 3D printers are good at producing pretty nice parts these days, especially if you print with small layer heights. You might be underestimating the possible quality of 3d printed objects.
TheSilva|3 months ago
nimrody|3 months ago
TurkishPoptart|3 months ago
random_moonwalk|3 months ago
binary132|3 months ago
fny|3 months ago
For your sake, I hope you built a heaphone jack.
random_moonwalk|3 months ago
tmilard|3 months ago
pragma_x|3 months ago
A more grown-up version of this would be 16 notes, with variable length patterns (4-16?), and a "swing" function. A little bit of I/O mux under the hood and I bet this design could be expanded in that way. Or maybe you just daisy-chain multiple sequencers?
michaelhoney|3 months ago
evereverever|3 months ago
phplovesong|3 months ago
fabioq|3 months ago
dazamarquez|3 months ago
RobertWesner|3 months ago
mttch|3 months ago
ty_2k|3 months ago
Bengalilol|3 months ago
warrenmiller|3 months ago
broast|3 months ago
oldestofsports|3 months ago
freshnode|3 months ago
lovegrenoble|3 months ago
dep_b|3 months ago
sgallant|3 months ago
dude250711|3 months ago
On a serious note: https://www.ericasynths.lv/shop/standalone-instruments-1/bul...
eitally|3 months ago
nrhrjrjrjtntbt|3 months ago
johntash|3 months ago
ronbenton|3 months ago
Krisso|3 months ago
Rioverde|3 months ago
yigalirani|3 months ago
findthebug|3 months ago
skrebbel|3 months ago
doppelgunner|3 months ago
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rickygman|3 months ago
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