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Mixtape Alpha

About Mixtape Alpha

Mixtape Alpha is the first in a series of super-scaled-down synthesizers and sound generators. We started with a raw chunk of electronics, and removed anything that wasn't a synth. What we were left with was a microcontroller, battery, and some LEDs.

Mixtape Alpha is an attempt to break down the barriers between people and electronics: To get them comfortable touching PCBs, and change expectations about how electronics should look. To this end, there are resistive touch pads, and all the trace routing took aesthetics into consideration as well. This concept was the brainchild of Jie Qi from the Hi-Low Tech group at the MIT Media Lab.

Limitations of the design

The mixtape concept relies upon low-cost, low-power electronics. It was essential to the design that it could run off a coin cell battery. To this end, a number of tradeoffs were made, some of which led to reduced performance. Some of these can be undone by the determined hacker.

Documentation

Files: Firmware

Files: Version 2 (only says "openmusiclabs" on back)

Files: Version 1 (Prototype - says "Media Lab" on back)

MixtapeAlpha (last edited 2013-10-29 02:00:18 by guest)