Push-button telephone. Analog drum machine. Arduino Nano. DIY amplifier. Shashwath Sundar, aka simple_but_nerdy, makes the telephone-drum machine fusion seem like it was meant to be.
At first glance I expected this would be mainly an enclosure hack, but it’s way more than that. There’s a full-blown analog drum machine design in here, and it’s surprisingly feature-packed. The telephone interface is integral to the design, not just a gimmicky afterthought.
Check out the specs:
- 4-voice analog functionality: Kick, Tom, Snare, Hi-hat (open/closed), each with dedicated circuits
- Drum sequencer, employing the phone keypad and 8×16 LED matrix display
- Arduino Nano for digital control, including Keypad, LedControl, and TimerOne libraries (it’s actually a good demonstration of those libraries’ functionality)!
- Tempo, mute/solo, sequence length, clear
- 5V power
This video goes through how its innards work, especially the circuits:
The second video focuses on sequencer functionality and gives you some musical demos:
And the full project is documented on GitHub; check his YouTube channel for a bunch of other cool, beginner-friendly projects.
https://github.com/ShashwathSundar/DIY-Drum-Machine
Oh yes, and I am 100% overdue in covering The Palestine Drum Liberator. I wanted to do it properly, and somehow that resulted in me never doing it (as happens sometimes) — coming in the next days. That project is better suited to participation with open licensing.
But regardless, I can think of no better time to talk about open drum machines and DIY than now. Resistance needs DIY.
And if you’re into this, a little history:
When Kraftwerk Issued Their Own Pocket Calculator Synthesizer — to Play Their Song “Pocket Calculator” (1981) [Open Culture]
Oh, and for our younger audiences — what is a telephone, exactly? Let’s answer in song!