Curious about one of the technical details, I'm only asking to learn more about the limits of the RPi:
couldn't this all be done only with the Raspberry Pi, using all those GPIO pins that it has? Feels like it is being underutilized and the project ought to be simplified to a single board (a single mains connection needed would be a very nice consequence too)
I was thinking the same thing except the Arduino instead of the Raspberry Pi. All the Pi is doing is "note selection and the synthesising of the audio buffers themselves." Surely the Arduino Uno can do that, too?
I think yes, but the LED code is designed for arduino so from a code reuse / prototyping perspective it would be simpler to do initial build with 2 units.
Correct answer. Also the RPi is only just powerful enough to run all the synths (it's a 3rd gen) and the prototype was Mac + Arduino; so made a lot of sense to just move the synthesis program to the Pi to make it self-contained and leave the Arduino program as-is.
Comments
Curious about one of the technical details, I'm only asking to learn more about the limits of the RPi:
couldn't this all be done only with the Raspberry Pi, using all those GPIO pins that it has? Feels like it is being underutilized and the project ought to be simplified to a single board (a single mains connection needed would be a very nice consequence too)
I was thinking the same thing except the Arduino instead of the Raspberry Pi. All the Pi is doing is "note selection and the synthesising of the audio buffers themselves." Surely the Arduino Uno can do that, too?
I think the Uno wouldn't have enough RAM for that, the Pi is a lot more powerful in that sense.
I think yes, but the LED code is designed for arduino so from a code reuse / prototyping perspective it would be simpler to do initial build with 2 units.
Correct answer. Also the RPi is only just powerful enough to run all the synths (it's a 3rd gen) and the prototype was Mac + Arduino; so made a lot of sense to just move the synthesis program to the Pi to make it self-contained and leave the Arduino program as-is.