Epic Teensy-Based Synth

Prajwal Mahesh is a big fan of Teenage Engineering, and especially their OP-1 digital audio workstation (DAW). This awesome device comes with a synthesizer, sampler sequencer and a four-track recorder in a mini-keyboard format in a fantastic style. The only problem is that they cost around $1,300, too much for Mahesh to reasonably justify.

Teenage Engineering also has a line of Pocket Operator products, which are lower priced, much smaller, and more limited. Mahesh's idea was to create something in-between the two capabilities-wise. While he wouldn’t have been the first person to think he could make a commercial product at a lower price with similar capabilities, his goal project goal was quite realistic:

I know it’ll be impossible to completely replicate the OP-1 at a cheaper price and at this point it’s pretty ridiculous for me to think I can even achieve the performance of a Pocket Operator, but hey, this whole thing is a learning opportunity.

The project is extensively documented on his blog, and in a series of YouTube videos. A directory for everything, as well as the code and hardware files, can be found on GitHub.

The concept and design, as well as a lot of research into the initial key configuration is found in this blog post, and info on the second version, with a color screen and a much different button configuration is available here. Both use Teensy boards to do the heavy audio lifting, but implement Atmel chips to read the many possible keypresses.

Video of the V2 hardware is seen below, and there's a ton of other info if you're thinking about creating a custom a custom audio device for yourself. At the end of the day, the V2 project was about $125. Of course, this doesn’t include build time, nor does it include how much knowledge Mahesh gained during its construction: