Hi, first post! I’ve got a background in writing audio software on computers (I love C and Lua) and I’m trying to get into the magical world of HARDWARE. I found out about the Norns and I was SUPER EXCITED about the idea of being able to write audio code for a small box without having to worry about the OS introducing latency, or without having to worry about my processes wrestling Chrome for the CPU. It’s just what I’ve been looking for.
But… I was also looking at trying to control other devices via CV. I’ve got a “Bastl Kastle” and a MiniBrute 2, and I was planning on getting one of these https://stemtera.com/ . The ability to orchestrate devices like this from a device like the Norns would be great. But the Norns only has 2 ins 2 outs (plus the headphones I guess— are those stereo?) which is not enough to do anything complicated, plus the website says those are line level and I think I need 0-5V.
Are there any solutions here? Could the Norns be modded to have some 5V ins/outs, or are there any Norns alternatives? If I constructed my own Norns-like RasPi setup would it likely be easy to just toss the extra IO in? (I should note at this point I have very limited hardware skills and have no idea how to solder… but part of why I’m looking into diy audio hardware is as a chance to learn)? One thing I’m considering is plugging the Norns into the Stemtera via USB, but getting the Stemtera USB working would be a project by itself, and I don’t know whether I have to think about latency then…
Is this a problem other people have solved before?