Hardware projects
Beagleboard stable USB EHCI hack
Occasionally, the USB EHCI controller on a Rev C3 Beagleboard stops working until the system is rebooted. It is usually triggered by heavy traffic, e.g. due to a WLAN dongle or a USB thumbdrive. It was apparently fixed properly in Rev C4, but if you're stuck with a C3 board the following hack may solve the problem for you. Read more.
Posted Thursday 13-May-2010 17:35, 7 comments.
Beagleboard VGA output
This article describes how you can extract a VGA signal from the LCD headers on a revision C beagleboard using two transistors and a bunch of resistors. Read more.
Posted Sunday 17-Jan-2010 18:00, 38 comments.
Bit banger
Bit banger is my most constrained and minimalistic microcontroller-based demo yet. It won the Oldschool 4k compo at Revision 2011. Read more.
- bitbanger-src (Source code, 7.1 kB)
- Linus Akesson - Bit Banger (MP3, 2.2 MB)
Posted Monday 13-Jun-2011 12:23, 20 comments.
Craft
Craft is a demo running on its own minimalistic demo platform. The demo platform is based on an ATmega88 microcontroller. Read more.
- lft_craft (Original video clip, Xvid, 89.4 MB)
- lft_craft_capture (Full screen video capture, H.264, 85.5 MB)
- Linus Akesson - Craft (Soundtrack, MP3, 3.3 MB)
- lft_craft_src (Schematics, firmware binaries and source code, 70.5 kB)
Posted Thursday 27-Mar-2008 21:33, 181 comments.
Dial-a-SID
I rebuilt an old bakelite phone into a jukebox for SID tunes. Here's a video about it! Read more.
Posted Sunday 4-Jul-2021 23:31, 10 comments.
Hardsync
Named after one of the characteristic features of the SID chip, Hardsync is a C64 party game that follows in the (wait for it...) footsteps of games like Dance Dance Revolution and StepMania. Read more.
- hardsync (D64, 170.8 kB)
- Hardsync (Sid, 4.8 kB)
- Linus Akesson - Hardsync - Menu (MP3, 1.7 MB)
- Linus Akesson - Hardsync - Hi-score and menu (MP3, 2.5 MB)
- hardsync-tools-1.0 (Source tarball, 11.4 kB)
Posted Thursday 8-Nov-2012 15:23, 12 comments.
Making the Chipophone
It all started when a good friend of mine asked me if I wanted an old electronic organ. He had bought it in a thrift store some years ago, but had now realized that it would remain untouched in his cellar forever unless he could find a new home for it. I accepted the gift on the condition that I could do whatever I wanted with it, in terms of modifications and experiments. Read more.
Posted Wednesday 21-Jul-2010 23:42, 179 comments.
Parallelogram
Parallelogram is a demo running on the Commodore One extender board, which contains an Altera Cyclone III FPGA and an SDRAM chip. The logic design was made from scratch, including a homebrew CPU, FM synth and blitter with pixel shader support. The demo won the wild compo at Revision 2012. Read more.
- lft_parallelogram_core (C-One core file and icon, zip archive, 331.9 kB)
- lft_parallelogram (Presentation video with captured demo, avi, 517.1 MB)
- Linus Akesson - Parallelogram (Soundtrack, MP3, 5.1 MB)
Posted Thursday 12-Apr-2012 00:03, 28 comments.
Phasor
Phasor, like Craft, is a demo running on a custom minimalistic ATmega88-based demo platform. But it generates a composite video signal (PAL) instead of a VGA signal. Read more.
- lft_phasor_presentation_and_cam_1280x720 (Presentation video with demo, 1280x720, 70.1 MB)
- lft_phasor_capture (High quality capture by Barta Zoli, 720x576, 475.8 MB)
- Linus Akesson - Phasor (Soundtrack, MP3, 3.9 MB)
- lft-phasor-src (Schematics, firmware binaries and source code, 80.1 kB)
Posted Wednesday 7-Apr-2010 15:58, 47 comments.
PO-2x
I'm proud to announce Arcade, Office and Robot, three affordable, portable synthesisers that I've developed for Teenage Engineering's Pocket Operator series. Read more.
Posted Tuesday 26-Jan-2016 06:34, 25 comments.
Power Ninja Action Challenge
Here's another ATmega88-based hardware chiptune, this time composed for Little Computer People 2009. It was my contribution to the "other music" compo, and won the 1st place. Read more.
- lft_power_ninja_action_challenge_atmega88 (IntelHex firmware image, 15.1 kB)
- Linus Akesson - Power Ninja Action Challenge (MP3, 3.2 MB)
Posted Sunday 19-Jul-2009 19:47, 14 comments.
Presentation tool
Here's a brief technical writeup of the slide show presentation tool I built for my Elements of Chip Music seminar. Read more.
Posted Friday 1-Jul-2011 10:31, 4 comments.
Pushing Onwards: Return of the Chipophone
The Chipophone bleeps again! This is my cover of Pushing Onwards, from the 2010 retro-game VVVVVV. Read more.
- Linus Akesson - Chipophone - Pushing Onwards.mp3 (MP3, 2.8 MB)
Posted Sunday 25-Mar-2018 16:25, 11 comments.
Rasp64
Rasp64 is a Raspberry Pi attached to the user port of a C64, primarily for the purpose of cross-development. Read more.
Posted Tuesday 5-Feb-2013 22:31, 10 comments.
The bitbuf
The bitbuf is a portable 8-bit minimalistic live looping machine. Designed as a tool for chip music improvisation and live performances, it aims to provide a set of simple yet versatile features. It's a work in progress, but I've made a prototype which is already quite functional and enjoyable to work with. Read more.
- lft_bitbuf_presentation (Video, 646.0 MB)
Posted Thursday 22-Dec-2011 15:20, 177 comments.
The chimney claw project
One year, my parents realized that there was a bird's nest down their chimney, at the very bottom. You could hear the chirps from within the kitchen. Read more.
Posted Wednesday 20-Jun-2007 19:31, 5 comments.
The Chipophone
The Chipophone is a homemade 8-bit synthesizer, especially suited for live chiptune playing. It has been built inside an old electronic organ. Read more.
- lft_chipophone_presentation (Xvid, 113.4 MB)
Posted Wednesday 21-Jul-2010 23:42, 211 comments.
The hardware chiptune project
Normally, when you create a chiptune, you start with an existing chip (such as the SID chip or the YM2149) and write a tune for it. We decided to start from scratch, and create a chip and a tune. Read more.
- kryo-hardware_chiptune (Original zipped release, DivX, 18.5 MB)
- Linus Akesson - The hardware chiptune project song (Recorded MP3, 1.5 MB)
- hardwarechiptune-cad (Schematic, EPS source code, 8.6 kB)
- hardwarechiptune-cad (Schematic, PDF, 31.9 kB)
- hardwarechiptune-tracker (Tracker with source code, docs and song data, 26.0 kB)
- hardwarechiptune-src (AVR source code, 10.5 kB)
Posted Saturday 30-Jun-2007 13:04, 83 comments.
The lampslide
If mounted normally, this chandelier would hang between the projector and the screen, casting a shadow. It would also block the view from the sofa. By using a wooden door jamb as a rail and constructing a small car to slide along it, I've suspended the chandelier so that it can be moved out of the way easily. Read more.
Posted Tuesday 10-Nov-2009 17:31, 6 comments.
The pot plant monitor
This pot plant is connected to my computer. Every five minutes or so, the resistance of the soil is measured. The resistance varies indirectly with the dampness of the soil, as you can see in the graph. Read more.
Posted Wednesday 9-Jan-2008 18:20, 14 comments.
The remote control project
This is the story of how I built a remote control system for my computer and speakers. It is based on an off-the-shelf universal remote and some AVR chips and other electronics. Read more.
Posted Friday 26-Oct-2007 18:39, 26 comments.
The sixtyforgan
The sixtyforgan is a Commodore 64 equipped with a spring reverb, featuring the keyboard layout of a chromatic button accordion. Read more.
- Linus Akesson - Sixtyforgan - Ich ruf' zu dir.mp3 (MP3, 2.6 MB)
Posted Sunday 28-Mar-2021 22:13, 13 comments.
The Swan
In an attempt to squeeze as much emotion as possible into a tiny chip, I managed to fit Camille Saint-Saëns' The Swan into 480 (out of 1024) bytes of ROM on an ATtiny15. The microcontroller runs at 1.6 MHz and provides 32 bytes of RAM (actually registers). Read more.
- Linus Akesson - The Swan (Video, 1280x720, Ogg Theora/Vorbis, 114.9 MB)
- Linus Akesson - The Swan (Soundtrack, MP3, 2.8 MB)
- lft-swan-src (Source code, 4.0 kB)
- lft-swan-cad (Schematics, PDF, 12.0 kB)
Posted Monday 26-Apr-2010 18:12, 9 comments.
Turbulence
Turbulence is the successor of craft. It's a microcontroller demo based on the Propeller chip from Parallax. External I/O consists of stereo sound (at line level) and a VGA signal. Read more.
- lft_turbulence_h264_capture_720x576 (Presentation video and high quality capture, 720x576, 139.0 MB)
- lft_turbulence_h264_presentation_and_cam_1280x720 (Presentation video and low quality capture, 1280x720, 144.0 MB)
- lft_turbulence_h264_presentation_and_cam_640x360 (Presentation video and low quality capture, 640x360, 45.7 MB)
- turbulence (Binary EEPROM image, 32.0 kB)
- Linus Akesson - Turbulence soundtrack (Soundtrack, MP3, 4.9 MB)
Posted Monday 13-Apr-2009 15:09, 21 comments.