Sleepwalking? Unexplained seizures? Neighbors have a rodent and plague problem? Don’t worry, and don’t be spooked by what some nuns told you! You just need the handheld, open-source Scaepe – Noiseferatu DIY kit!
Hey, come on; it’s the plot of Nosferatu. (Even the remake, not just the 1922 version!) Anyway, for all of you pure of heart…
Rob Scape (Scaepe) writes us to tell us about this handheld-sized generative texture synthesizer. Because of all those preset algorithms and easy tweaking, this really is like a demonic take on the KAOSS Pad — an all-chaos rendition, if you like. Wavetables and bitwise logic operations and so on all get warped and glitched out.
- 45 algorithms across 5 banks
- 5 banks: (1) generative waveables, (2) noisy textures, (3) BitBend (wavetable manipulations), (4) Blips and tones (some of which even might not frighten your neighbors), (5) logical operation disorder
- Flip the front panel, depending on whether you want the Nosferatu to be visible or prefer a minimalist all-black look
- Four knobs for shaping, plus one big volume fader, LED display, and trigger controls
- USB-C powered
And it’s all free and open source. Everything runs on the Seeed Studio XIAO SAMD21 microcontroller: (Folks, speaking of entities controlled by evil demon possession of forces larger than us and capable of our destruction, we really should consider getting off GitHub. Just saying. I have some work to do there, too.)
One of the coolest features actually isn’t mentioned anywhere until you do go over to the repository. It is exceptionally easy to create your own algorithms. This is even a fun way to jump between the C and Arduino code here and VCV Rack or gen~ in Max (which in turn now runs on Ableton Move).
It’s honestly one of the things that leave me cold about AI code assistance. Like… I want to get my hands dirty and break things. I want to type in code and not know what I’m doing, and then have my arms gnawed on by some rats for a while. (Who said Nosferatu was a horror movie? I mean if you root for the rats and the plague, it’s a triumphant film of redemption.)
So Noiseferatu proudly lets you do that. That’s not a bug, it’s a #RPFJHF gfsjkl dALJ*#&(R**(& fdhjkfjhfDHLJ!
https://github.com/rob-scape/noisferatu
You can check out the firmware and specs, build one yourself, or get the full kit from Thonk:
Scaepe – Noisferatu – Full DIY Kit @ Thonk
Hey, did I smell some coffee?
* In deference to KORG, an NTS-3 KAOSS Pad would be a great companion to this and the noise thing I wrote about most recently — see below — plus you can run Sinevibes stuff on it, on sale now.
That NTS-3 is available now from Perfect Circuit and Thomann.
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Previously: