About the project

I am interested in music technology, particularly in analog and modular synthesizers. Taking the Advanced Digital Projects Lab at UIUC allowed me to work on a module that would take in Control Voltage signals, digitize them and output them as I2C data. It is intended to function with the Haken Audio Continuumini, however, I am interested in generalizing this interface to other digital systems as a future project.

Design

This is the printed PCB of a previous version of the project. This design used one op-amp circuit to map all four inputs to a single voltage range set. Granted the range was user customizable by adjusting the values of the feedback, ground, and reference resistors. I have since update the design to include an input section with dedicated op-amp circuits allowing independent voltage ranges for each input. Additionally, I account for a decrease in distance between coupling capacitors and their respective chips.

This is the latest schematic which includes the input section update I plan on implementing. This version allows each input voltage range to be customized by the user just by changing the values of the feedback, ground, and reference resistors as it did for the previous design. I am still thinking about the possibility of including a switch for each input in order to make it easier for the user to switch ranges without having to solder different resistors.

This is the latest PCB design that incorporates the changes mentioned above.

Papers

This is a single page poster that briefly describes the project, some background on the Eurorack standard, and future work I plan to do.

Here is the project report for the previous design. The report has more detail on modular synthesizers, and the protocols that are used for the project.