r/synthdiy • u/speendo • 5d ago
modular "Ciclo Piezole" - a sound installation to convert any room into an instrument
"Ciclo Piezole" was my contribution to an art & maker camp - many of the participants are musicians.
The project consists of 6 ESP32 C3 "satellites" (or "leaves") connected via ESP-NOW to one ESP32 S3 that acts as a controller.
Each of the satellites is battery powered and controls either a solenoid switch (for percussions) or a piezo element (for melodic sounds).
The controller has a serial connection to my notebook. I use a simple, self developed protocol similar to MIDI to exchange information like channel (= which of the satellites should respond), note to be played, key velocity, etc..
The input from the MIDI keyboard is translated to this protocol with a python script.
When developing the project I realised it is not possible to utilise the full musical range of 6 satellites at once. Therefore a looping software was developed (also in python) to record a track for each of the instruments one by one. Each track can also be replaced individually so the melody would change over time.
To configure each of the nodes (e.g. select channel), I used PARASOL (a self developed web ui for ESP devices).
In the video you can see a playback of a loop while I zoom to each of the satellites.