#1

Hi Folks,

I wanted to share some information about a project I’ve been involved with:

A little less than a year ago, I released my Telharfauxnium alternate firmware for the Music Thing Modular Radio Music. I had written the firmware over the course of a weekend and had been planning to implement new features such as waveform switching. I had also been in touch with Alice Blunt, whose coding chops are far superior to mine, about working together to improve the firmware. Today, Alice posted an update including all of these features as well as improved 1V/O tracking. We are working to release this update in the next month or so. It is still free, all you need is a Radio Music module. You can find the current release on the Radio Music Github under alternate firmware. Here’s a video of the latest version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJCLCnVf3g8

You can find the original version here: https://github.com/TomWhitwell/RadioMusic/tree/master/Collateral/alt.firmware

The new version will be uploaded in the next month or so.

Description of the original project:

“Telharfauxnium is an additive synthesis firmware for Radio Music. Its tone is comprised of fifteen sines: The first sine is the funadmental, which is determined by the sum of the station knob and the station CV input (1 V per octave). Seven upper harmonics are generated by multiplying the fundamental frequency by exponents of a scaling factor and seven sub-harmonics are generated by dividing the center frequency by exponents of the same scaling factor. The scaling factor is determined by the sum of the start knob and the start CV input.”

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#2

Awesome! I have a radio music made with a Bugbrand format front panel, will definitely be trying this out when available. Is it just a case of replacing files on the SD card to change firmware or is it more involved (apologies i’m totally ignorant to how the radio music module actually works)

#3

You need to get to the backside of your modul. There is the teensy board which has an usb port. Dependig on your teensy you have to connect the teensy via usb to a computer with or without connecting the modul to your PSU. So first try without!! If the teensy doesn‘t power up you need your PSU. There‘s a trace on the teensy which can be cutted to disconnect. That means the teensy doesn‘t get power from usb. It is really important that you don‘t connect via usb while powering the modul fromthe PSU if the trace is not cutted!

You need a little programm called teensy loader to flash it with the new firmware

https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/loader_mac.html

Also check: https://github.com/TomWhitwell/RadioMusic/

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#4

Thanks! I’ll try this out when the new firmware is available.

#5

I have a secondhand unbuilt Radio Music kit coming shortly and this will go right on it. Thanks for working on the code and sharing it.

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#6

@Mangrove whatever happened to the refactor?

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#7

Basically I stopped hearing from the person who rewrote my code. Probably could have pushed for it or written another version myself, but my wife and I had a baby, and finishing up my Ph.D. became a priority. Also, I’ve never heard any examples of people actually using it, so I haven’t been super motivated, since it seems like only a small number of people actually use it.

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#8

I should also say I really appreciate you asking about it or taking an interest. I’ve said this elsewhere, but if people post the work they’ve done with it, that’s the biggest thing they can do to motivate me to work on it. Honestly if someone else wants to mess with it, that’s great. It’s incredibly simple, I actually wrote it the same afternoon I learned to code for the teensy.

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#9

no worries, just curious.

its funny, I got some modules that make the chord organ (the version I originally diy’d) unneeded, and i have multiple disting mk4’s that seem to have the audio playback thing really covered, and was trying to figure how to get value out of something i already have instead of buying something new. Having another voice in the system is sweet, especially for 4hp.

I’ll give the current version a go. I do some programming and have done some c++ for arduino, but not audio stuff. Do you have any sense of what the contributor was doing? main part I was interested was the better 1v/o tracking.

will bump the MW thread if I make anything, maybe that will tease out any other users.