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.
Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
51–60 of 216 posts
Re: Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
#52Re: Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
#53Looks 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?". :) https://www.reddit.com/r/DIY/comments/8g8pce/fiberoptic_star...
And then the things you do to redeem your guilt for the second child is a whole interesting area.
That's what the drum machine module is for.
Re: Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
#54I'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!
Re: Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
#55Cool! 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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6M_KrZByz4
MFOS Weird Sound Generator
https://musicfromouterspace.com/index.php?CATPARTNO=WSG001&P...
Re: Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
#56Looks so nice! The sam is a midi synth chip right? Super cool. How/where did you get the knobs?
Re: Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
#57This is very impressive, it looks great!
Re: Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
#58Looks so nice! The sam is a midi synth chip right? Super cool. How/where did you get the knobs?
Thanks! Yes it's a little digital synth that receives MIDI.
I used Chroma Cap knobs: https://store.djtechtools.com/products/chroma-caps-knobs-and...
Re: Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
#59I'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.
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 :)
The POs are fun to play with, but from experience I would much rather recommend getting a used mk1 Novation Circuit. For $150 - $200 you have a four track drum machine plus two tracks of a great synth engine, with a built in mixer and simple effects, midi in if you want to use a keyboard, and the thing is still compact and battery powered.
Re: Show HN: I built a synth for my daughter
#60> A 3D-printed enclosure is fine for a prototype, but a real product likely needs injection-molded parts, which require expensive tooling. For kid-friendly toys, yes. But for older users not necessarily: https://teenage.engineering/products/po
Wood is also pretty child friendly.
But neither injection molding nor carpentry will protect a synth from a child dunking it in a puddle of water.