5 ms·

Open source, programmable effects pedal for guitarists, musicians and hackers

93 points by dsego 13y ago

rhodri 13y ago
Radical! Produced something very similar as part of the Cambridge CS degree in 2010. We used ARM's mBed platform (http://mbed.org http://mbed.org) to build a set of modular effect classes in C++ that could be chained together and blasted onto a single device to create a signal processing chain. The 10-bit DAC and Cortex-M0 processor didn't help but we got some very interesting results by using Chebychev distortion. Here's a picture of me and Scott rocking out: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/group-projects/photos-2010/g.jpg http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/group-projects/photos-2010/...
MWil 13y ago
site down?
- robinhoodexe 13y ago
  Seems so
  - dec0dedab0de 13y ago
    too bad, it sounds awesome.
    - arms 13y ago
      Agreed. I just watched the kickstarter vid and this is exactly what I've been hoping for. Can't wait til I get one in my pedal board!
mattkirman 13y ago
Whilst the site is down here's a link to their successful Kickstarter from last year that gives a bit more information about the project - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marser/owl-programmable-effects-pedal https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marser/owl-programmable...
- bjelkeman-again 13y ago
  Thanks. I need to get on of them.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jarmitage 13y ago
Martin and Guillaume are great guys. Some very awesome things are going to happen with this project once it's out in the wild. I encourage people to get involved!
beshrkayali 13y ago
This sounds awesome!
agladlad 13y ago
cool! You should also check out the pedalShield for Arduino http://www.electrosmash.com/pedalshield http://www.electrosmash.com/pedalshield
- chillingeffect 13y ago
  This is a small collection of programmable guitar pedals I've been maintaining, including The Owl, my own design, the FV-1 and many others for Arduinos and whatnot: http://diydsp.com/livesite/pages/GuitarPedals http://diydsp.com/livesite/pages/GuitarPedals
csense 13y ago
This is a poor headline. If you don't know that an "effects pedal" is a piece of musical equipment, the headline makes it sound like open source, programmable effects are riding bicycles for guitarists, musicians and hackers. I guess it's conceivable that people would come up with a fundraising idea involving riding bikes to fund musicians, but referring to the bike riders as "open source, programmable effects" sounds downright bizarre.
- dsego 13y ago
  Unfortunately, the headline is limited to 80 characters (not people, but graphemes like letters and digits, in case you're not familiar with computer terminology).
  - mwfunk 13y ago
    I'm sorry, "digits"? You mean like fingers? Why would you put fingers in a headline? What does that even mean?!?
- siddboots 13y ago
  I venture that the product is aimed toward people who know what "effects pedal" means.
gtani 13y ago
Maybe they got a traffic spike somewhere, cached: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-Bxi9peOJfAJ:http://hoxtonowl.com/%2Bsite:http://hoxtonowl.com/&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&client=firefox-a&hl=en&ct=clnk https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-Bxi9p... vaguely related NAMM news: Korg synth kit http://gizmodo.com/build-your-own-korg-ms-20-synth-with-this-limited-editi-1507531364 http://gizmodo.com/build-your-own-korg-ms-20-synth-with-this...
skue 13y ago
As someone who would have loved this a decade ago but whose instruments have mostly collected dust the last several years, I'm a bit surprised that this is packaged as a traditional pedal. Do musicians still travel and perform with a crate of effects pedals? I would have assumed that much of this would have shifted to mobile (in an appropriately rugged case). Are the audio adapters too poor quality, is Android not sufficiently real time, is this product simply for retro appeal, or ... what am I missing?
- cdawzrd 13y ago
  Pedals are still the state of the art. Why would any performing musician want to use a smartphone instead of something designed to be controlled by feet, even if Android had something close to real time audio (it still doesn't)?
- badgod 13y ago
  my flatmate has a boss multieffects pedal. hundreds of settings. rugged and can be stomped on. I've heard that android is notoriously bad at audio and google aren't interested in putting resources behind that aspect of the platform, so there are latency problems and what not. There's an open issue about it on google code iirc.
  - rhodri 13y ago
    I've found that trying to output audio or MIDI in real-time on the JVM (on Android or PC) is a lost cause, perhaps because of the unpredictability of GC
- rhodri 13y ago
  The appeal of physical pedals is still strong – as is a general aversion to taking a computer on tour with you. A laptop is seen as unreliable (or unauthentic) by most musicians I've encountered, even though most of those same musicians readily embrace modern technology in the studio. Some pedals just seem to sound better than comparable software offerings (i.e. http://www.strymon.net/products/bluesky/ http://www.strymon.net/products/bluesky/) which if anything is a testament to the DSP engineers working on them. Personally, I use a laptop and Akai MPK49 controller keyboard live. I had my first ever crash while soundchecking last Wendesday...
gourneau 13y ago
If anyone has old racing game controller pedals around, they are easy to connect to with PyGame to do anything you want. Here is an example: https://github.com/gourneau/webpedals/blob/master/drivedata.py https://github.com/gourneau/webpedals/blob/master/drivedata....

93 points by dsego 13y ago

Radical! Produced something very similar as part of the Cambridge CS degree in 2010. We used ARM's mBed platform (http://mbed.org http://mbed.org) to build a set of modular effect classes in C++ that could be chained together and blasted onto a single device to create a signal processing chain. The 10-bit DAC and Cortex-M0 processor didn't help but we got some very interesting results by using Chebychev distortion. Here's a picture of me and Scott rocking out: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/group-projects/photos-2010/g.jpg http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/group-projects/photos-2010/...

MWil 13y ago

site down?

robinhoodexe 13y ago
Seems so
- dec0dedab0de 13y ago
  too bad, it sounds awesome.
  - arms 13y ago
    Agreed. I just watched the kickstarter vid and this is exactly what I've been hoping for. Can't wait til I get one in my pedal board!

mattkirman 13y ago

Whilst the site is down here's a link to their successful Kickstarter from last year that gives a bit more information about the project - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marser/owl-programmable-effects-pedal https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marser/owl-programmable...

bjelkeman-again 13y ago
Thanks. I need to get on of them.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jarmitage 13y ago

Martin and Guillaume are great guys. Some very awesome things are going to happen with this project once it's out in the wild. I encourage people to get involved!

beshrkayali 13y ago

This sounds awesome!

agladlad 13y ago

cool! You should also check out the pedalShield for Arduino http://www.electrosmash.com/pedalshield http://www.electrosmash.com/pedalshield

chillingeffect 13y ago
This is a small collection of programmable guitar pedals I've been maintaining, including The Owl, my own design, the FV-1 and many others for Arduinos and whatnot: http://diydsp.com/livesite/pages/GuitarPedals http://diydsp.com/livesite/pages/GuitarPedals

csense 13y ago

This is a poor headline. If you don't know that an "effects pedal" is a piece of musical equipment, the headline makes it sound like open source, programmable effects are riding bicycles for guitarists, musicians and hackers. I guess it's conceivable that people would come up with a fundraising idea involving riding bikes to fund musicians, but referring to the bike riders as "open source, programmable effects" sounds downright bizarre.

dsego 13y ago
Unfortunately, the headline is limited to 80 characters (not people, but graphemes like letters and digits, in case you're not familiar with computer terminology).
- mwfunk 13y ago
  I'm sorry, "digits"? You mean like fingers? Why would you put fingers in a headline? What does that even mean?!?
siddboots 13y ago
I venture that the product is aimed toward people who know what "effects pedal" means.

gtani 13y ago

Maybe they got a traffic spike somewhere, cached: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-Bxi9peOJfAJ:http://hoxtonowl.com/%2Bsite:http://hoxtonowl.com/&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&client=firefox-a&hl=en&ct=clnk https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:-Bxi9p... vaguely related NAMM news: Korg synth kit http://gizmodo.com/build-your-own-korg-ms-20-synth-with-this-limited-editi-1507531364 http://gizmodo.com/build-your-own-korg-ms-20-synth-with-this...

skue 13y ago

As someone who would have loved this a decade ago but whose instruments have mostly collected dust the last several years, I'm a bit surprised that this is packaged as a traditional pedal. Do musicians still travel and perform with a crate of effects pedals? I would have assumed that much of this would have shifted to mobile (in an appropriately rugged case). Are the audio adapters too poor quality, is Android not sufficiently real time, is this product simply for retro appeal, or ... what am I missing?

cdawzrd 13y ago
Pedals are still the state of the art. Why would any performing musician want to use a smartphone instead of something designed to be controlled by feet, even if Android had something close to real time audio (it still doesn't)?
badgod 13y ago
my flatmate has a boss multieffects pedal. hundreds of settings. rugged and can be stomped on. I've heard that android is notoriously bad at audio and google aren't interested in putting resources behind that aspect of the platform, so there are latency problems and what not. There's an open issue about it on google code iirc.
- rhodri 13y ago
  I've found that trying to output audio or MIDI in real-time on the JVM (on Android or PC) is a lost cause, perhaps because of the unpredictability of GC
rhodri 13y ago
The appeal of physical pedals is still strong – as is a general aversion to taking a computer on tour with you. A laptop is seen as unreliable (or unauthentic) by most musicians I've encountered, even though most of those same musicians readily embrace modern technology in the studio. Some pedals just seem to sound better than comparable software offerings (i.e. http://www.strymon.net/products/bluesky/ http://www.strymon.net/products/bluesky/) which if anything is a testament to the DSP engineers working on them. Personally, I use a laptop and Akai MPK49 controller keyboard live. I had my first ever crash while soundchecking last Wendesday...

gourneau 13y ago

If anyone has old racing game controller pedals around, they are easy to connect to with PyGame to do anything you want. Here is an example: https://github.com/gourneau/webpedals/blob/master/drivedata.py https://github.com/gourneau/webpedals/blob/master/drivedata....