Woodwinds and brass are so 19th century. We’re living in the future and now it is synthesizers all the way down. There are many to choose from and the Bleep Labs Nebulophone is a neat example that was sold from 2012 to 2016, with the design files now available on GitHub for DIYers. Marcus Dunn liked how the Nebulophone sounds, but wanted it to be more practical. That’s why he developed this “Solar” upgrade that dramatically enhances the playability of the Nebulophone.
The primary interface of the Nebulophone is a stylus keyboard integrated directly into the PCB. That was a design choice that saved a lot of money and has a lot of character, similar to the iconic Stylophone, but a stylus is a bit unwieldy during performances that include several pieces of equipment.
Dunn’s Solar upgrade adds a tactile keyboard and repackages the entire thing so that it can fit in a Eurorack along with other modules. There is also a sync-in for using Solar with other synths.
The audio circuitry is based on the original Nebulophone, but Dunn completely redesigned the PCB to accommodate the new features. In fact, Solar has two PCBs: one for the circuitry and one that mostly acts as a cover plate. It looks great with the Cherry MX key switches and key caps.
The brain of the operation is an Arduino Nano board and it runs the Nebulophone sketch, available on Dunn’s GitHub page. As Dunn demonstrates in his video, Solar sounds really cool and would be a great addition to your Eurorack.
The post Solar upgrades the Nebulophone synthesizer to enhance playability appeared first on Arduino Blog.