Arduino Octosynth

Arduino Octosynth

         The octosynth is a polyphonic synthesizer that is able to produce eight Pulse Width Modulated tones that form together a musical scale. There is this great site called http://www.instructables.com/ that had a posting on how to make your own octosynth. So I decided to give it a try and put it in a Margarine Tupperware.

I Used:

An Arduino
12 Male headers (Optional)
11 Jumper Wires
Metal Tacs
Enclosure (I used a Margarine Tupperware)
Power Jack and Battery or Usb Cable
Speaker

Step 1: Find an enclosure. (I used a Margarine Tupperware)

Step 2:  Insert Tacs (8 voices = 8 Tacs) and cut a hole for a speaker

Step 3: Carefully Solder wires to tacs (warning if solder gun directly touches tac, the plastic WILL start melting so be careful!)

Step 4: Find/Purchase speaker and install into top of enclosure. (I found my speaker in a junk toy laying around my apartment, I also added tape on the bottom end to help it stay in place!)

Step 5: Place Arduino inside of Margarine Tupperware and cut hole on side accordingly to height of Arduino's USB Import. (I stacked small boxes under Arduino so it could be a little elevated inside enclosure.

Step 6: Insert speaker cables into Arduino! Positive (+) goes to Digital 11 and Negative(-) goes to GND.

Step 7: Attaching Tac Wires to Arduino.

Do   (Digital 6)

Re   (Digital 7)

Mi   (Analog 0)

Fa   (Analog 1)

Sol  (Analog 2)

La   (Analog 3)

Ti    (Analog 4)

Do  (Analog 5)

Step 8: After putting everything in the enclosure, hookup the usb cable to your Arduino and PC / Mac. if you don't have the Arduino Program you can get the Software here.  Then just upload the Code (which was written by Joe Marshall) to the Arduino.

Step 9: ENJOY! :)