New CMOS based optical disc synth/sequencer - STAR SONG

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Hey CMOSers, here's a new device I've been working on since around the start of the year and have out now (technically in preorder for a few more days): STAR SONG

It's a sequencer/synthesizer that is programmed with a translucent-ringed rotating disc you draw on. The entire device is built from printed circuit board.

The circuitry is almost all CMOS.

Basic idea is there is a light arm, a stepper motor, the disc, and a set of light sensors that output positive logic signal when a shadow passes over them.

I've attached a schem of the very simple CMOS light sensor circuit I came up with for this.

From there, the set of six sensors gate/sequence elements of a tunable three octave synth very similar to the Melody Oracle (there's a big thread on that device here).

The disc rotation is turned on and off and reversed using touch contacts in the corners. I posted the schem for the touch toggle circuit I used in another thread on CMOS touch sensors.

Lest thing is a band pass filter built on a 4069UB with an LDR that controls the filter cutoff. You draw the cutoff on the inner ring of the disc.

The motor control is a 40106 oscillator into a 4040 used as a binary counter into into a 4051 (used to output stepping order to the the stepper motor's driver).

The cool thing about the stepper motor in combination with CMOS is that you can sequence the rotation of the disc and get very precise synced loops and forward and backward movement with basic oscillator and gate inputs from external synths.


Here's the overview video, will post some more basic demos in this thread soon.

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[PHOBoS]

brilliant as always

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