My Pedal Prototype

It has been a while since I last wrote a proper blog post, what with it being summer and all I thought I'd have a rest, but I wasn't just relaxing - I have been prototyping a guitar pedal! Using software development techniques I learnt at university, trial and error and online forums I think I am through the early stages, so I'm sharing what I've done so far.

The main audio effects are written in a piece of software called Pure Data, a real-time graphical dataflow programming environment for audio. In this programme I've created 11 effects (so far), which include a hall reverb, flanger, phaser and vibrato, as well as a few of my own more creative, unique effects. Pure Data is ran on a Raspberry Pi, which will run headless once the project is totally completed.

Connected to the Raspberry Pi by USB is an Arduino Uno, which is used to connect buttons and potentiometers to the Pure Data project and to control an LCD screen. The button controls are to turn on and off audio processing, to cycle through the effects, to load preset settings and finally one button to control which effect parameter the one potentiometer controls. The LCD screen displays the name of the selected effect and the control parameter which is currently selected.

I'm currently using my Lexicon Omega audio interface to test out the effects, but I will soon buy a dedicated Raspberry Pi audio card which has line level inputs and outputs, which, whilst not being perfect levels, are significantly closer to instrument level than headphone levels.

As you can tell there is still a bit of work to do, including designing a PCB to replace the breadboards I'm currently using to prototype. I will then design an enclosure and put everything together!  I will keep you updated with the progress of this project, but apologies if posts are less regular than they used to be!

Coming Soon...

Apologies for the lack of posts recently, what with it being summer I have had some weeks off! I have also been busy working on a new pedal design, which soon I will be posting about.

Thank you for your continued support for The Pick, look forward to what is to come!