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

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, 16 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, 171 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, 10 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, 177 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, 25 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, 45 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, 19 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, 13 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, 9 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, 9 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, 176 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, 4 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, 206 comments.

The hardware chiptune project

• 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, 80 comments.

The lampslide

Posted Tuesday 10-Nov-2009 17:31, 5 comments.

The pot plant monitor

Posted Wednesday 9-Jan-2008 18:20, 14 comments.

The remote control project

Posted Friday 26-Oct-2007 18:39, 26 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, 19 comments.