The new RP2040 chip by RaspberryPi is amazing. When we got our hands on this beautiful little thing, we did what we always do with new chips and slapped on a Goldfish; our favourite acid bassline synthesizer (we make fish and chips hahahaha). While benchmarking the performance by copy/pasting instances Read more
After some major drama in the workshop (leakages, iron dust cloud, broken floor, rainwater coming in, etc) I finally have some time to share a few progress pictures. First and foremost: IT WORKS! The Goldfish R4 UI board can be used as a stand alone USB-MIDI controller! I had to Read more
The Goldfish v4 user-interface board has been ordered! The new big protoboards too! A batch of tiny protoboards too! And a set of LED badges for the summer festivals where we shall be jumping around! Goldfish v4 UI board: Festival LED badge: Small Protoboard: Large protoboard:
The UI board for the Goldfish v4 is almost ready for production (post will follow soon) – so the search for fancy factories has begun! I was quite charmed by the colours of this fish: (found here: http://www.andreaharner.com/archives/2007/11/sos_goldfish_na.html) Which led me to search for circuitboards with white soldermasks and red Read more
While searching for some easy-to-add USB options for the new Goldfish development, I revisisted the V-USB package. This package allows you to add USB to any small microcontroller that can add an interrupt to a pinchange. Link: http://vusb.wikidot.com/ While digging through earlier projects using this library, I found this amazing Read more
The FPGA-based Goldfish is still in constant flux. I decided it needed more encoders on the frontpanel, AND some visual feedback for the value of each of the encoders. Each encoder now has 16 LEDs around it to show the current value/meaning. Apparently there are some suppliers that build complete Read more
After playing with the FPGA boards for a while, I decided to completely overhaul the Goldfish board. Spending a bit more time and money will make this box much more useful for the coming years of audiovisual experiments! The current preliminary hardware feature set: Spartan 6 LX9 FPGA Freescale MK20 Read more
Let’s make some noise! Most development starts in a very cushy environment with great debugging support. Goldfish once started in the Jeskola Buzz virtual studio platform so I could quickly test and optimize the algorithms without having to upload and install the binaries on a PocketPC. The Goldfish and Platinumfish synthesizer plugins Read more
HDMI video out should be well within reach of a Spartan 6 FPGA. I am still in the process of readin up and figuring out. Here are some of the more interesting reads I’ve found. Some are interesting in-depth, technical details, some are stories of people that did this before. Read more
The Goldfish platform is slowly growing in scope and complexity. The first three Goldfish designs focussed on getting components to work at all – microcontroller, audio codec, TFT screen and MIDI. The designs I’m working on right now will provide the processing power to do something more interesting than polyphonic ringtones. Read more