Embedded ChucK Effects Pedal

Inventor

What if we used a PC/104 system to make a ChucKian guitar effects box? We could download ChucK and a bunch of ChucK files to it and set it up for all sorts of effects. Not that anyone would ever do it cause I'm sure there are other existing solutions, but it's a nice concept. I want one already...

PC/104 Wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC104

Inventor · Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 4:00 pm Post subject:

Never mind, I just found this:

http://www.zzounds.com/item--ZOMG92TT

which is a $400 effects pedal with everything.

But still no thunderstorm...

radarsat1 · Joined: Mar 14, 2008 Posts: 14 Location: Montreal

Look at this thing...

http://www.line6.com/news/pressReleases/644

basically a $200 embedded DSP developer kit.
I can't wait to start porting software to it. Smile

Says available in "spring 2008"!

Inventor · Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2008 4:16 pm Post subject:

yeah, that looks awesome! It requires a PC, but I do have an old notebook lying around that I could use. That's $200 plus the cost of a pedal and I guess cartridges, but still cheap for what it is. Thanks for the info!

kijjaz · Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 6:14 am Post subject:

It's a very nice idea. I usually use ChucK as an effect for various instruments..
but you might wanna need a quite low latency,
so a faster PC or a fast operating system would help a lot.

deknow · Posted: Sun Mar 30, 2008 7:50 am Post subject:

...my understanding of the line 6 product is that it is $200 _including_ the pedal with usb connector, software, and one programable module.

deknow

radarsat1 · Joined: Mar 14, 2008 Posts: 14 Location: Montreal

That said, you can get quite low latency on PC's now-a-days, if you runs a minimal amount of software and have the linux kernel compiled for 1 KHz.
I'd love to have an extra tiny box lying around just to run audio processing code. Something small and fanless, like a PicoITX. Add some buttons somehow and presto...

well that's the hard part with PCs actually, is adding any extra IO.
PC/104 isn't too bad for that I guess.

I've also been wanting to see how much real-time audio processing you can get out of a gumstix. http://www.gumstix.org/

These things are pretty awesome and you can get audio attachments for them that have GPIO and ADC/DAC. (the robo-audio)

Advantage is that they are _tiny_ and come pre-installed with Linux, so you can just cross-compile your software, upload it and go. Downside is that, being ARM processors, they don't have a floating-point unit, so for audio that could be a big problem.

Inventor · Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2008 1:13 am Post subject:

The gumstix look amazing, but too bad about the lack of floating point. That's not very ChucKtastic Rolling Eyes

PC-104 is ultra-durable with silicon hard drives and no moving parts, but would be pricey and have custom headaches. Rolling Eyes

How about a $599 Mac Mini in a metal box? It's a little pricey, but it serves as your PC too. I happen to have some shock foam saved for 15 years for just such a purpose. I think it's still good.

Or for that matter, one could just get a notebook and build a thin suitcase to hold it and the audio interface device. That's what Gibson did on their high-end digital guitar with six analog outputs.

To really go in style one could mount a 20 or 24 inch iMac in one of those metal suitcases. That's one big guitar pedal, but you get a 20 inch screen for the price of a small notebook. That would help if you're running something like Synth Lab because of all those windows, sheesh!

Have I rambled on enough? Thanks for your patience... Just typing out loud again...

radarsat1 · Joined: Mar 14, 2008 Posts: 14 Location: Montreal

I suppose now would be a good time to mention AudioPint.. Smile

http://audiopint.org/

Again though, the problem with PCs is adding extra IO. The parallel port used to be a good way to do this, but they are slowly disappearing..

I suppose you can still buy a parallel-to-USB converter, but I'm not sure how well they work.

It's a shame to have to build something like an Arduino just to be able to read a 5 volt digital signal. I guess it could be worse though, they are only like $20 to buy I think.