Albert Nyström shares their DIY creation – 3 months of work, one $30 Teensy 4.1 microcontroller / USB brain, a total BOM cost of $70, and one cute-looking drum machine like no other (truly).
The walkthrough video talks a bit about the project, jams through some different genres, and goes in deep on each part:
Now, $70 may sound cheap, but the cost of putting things into production tends to be literally more than the sum of the parts. (That “three months of work” part should tell you something.)
It’s a beautiful project. There’s some messy code and schematics online – not really intended for someone else to try to recreate this, but worth a quick browse if you’re making your own project, like spying on someone else’s workbench.
https://github.com/albnys/Drum-Machine
The code is the .ino file and the appeal of Teensy is right there at the top – a ton of functions are built into the platform, so it’s great for folks toying around.
Anyway, I can’t say how refreshing it is that in an age of presets and AI automation, some folks are saying “you know, maybe I could build my own drum machine.” That’s not for everyone, but what might be for all of us is the idea of doing things ourselves, wrong. That’s at least what keeps me coming back to music and music makers.