Blog Posts

The C-Thru Music AXiS-49 plug n play music interface was a velocity sensitive MIDI input device designed for composing and arranging music. Ben Glover’s Midihex is a new MIDI controller inspired by the AXiS-49, with 98 playing keys and an additional five function keys.

What the original device unique is the 49-note, 98-key harmonic table layout, which facilitates playing and composition along traditional interval sequences. Ben’s design uses Hall-effect sensors, enabling not just note velocity, but also the more expressive MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE), meaning timbre, pitch, amplitude, and other parameters could be modulated. The Midihex is based on the Teensy 4.1, with open-source firmware, allowing customization of the layout to use for example Wicki-Hayden, or microtonal scales such as Bohlen-Pierce or 31-TET. Find out more on the project’s web site, and see a demo in the video below.

Robert Xiao, Gierad Laput, Yang Zhang and Chris Harrison have used a Teensy to prototype Deus EM Machina: on-touch contextual functionality for smart IoT appliances.

In a world of increasingly app-controlled devices (I need three different apps just to turn my lights off at night, for example!), what was once a convenience soon becomes overbearing. The Deus EM Machina system augments a regular smartphone with a large copper antenna and a custom PCB, which amplifies electromagnetic (EM) emissions from electronic devices, allowing a custom background service on the phone to identify them and launch the appropriate app. In their study, they demonstrated identification of appliances with 98.8% accuracy. Learn more on Chris’s web site, in the original paper, or in the video below.

Dylan Brophy aka Nuclaer Tech has created a Teensy 4.1 carrier board called the Teensy 4.1 Computer, which equips the microcontroller with SBC-like ports and form factor.

Four USB ports, an Ethernet jack, and high-quality audio output make it ideal for synths, game consoles, computer emulation, and other highly-connected projects.

In addition to the typical Arduino-based development workflow, the board supports Teensy NTIOS, an Arduino-based operating system, complete with shell. Other features include a TI TUSB2046B
four-port USB 2.0 12-Mbps hub, 1A+ per port with overload protection, and a PCM5102 stereo DAC and OPA1688 low-distortion op-amp to deliver optimal audio to the onboard 3.5mm audio jack.

The assembled board is available on Tindie, with detailed specs and schematics on the project wiki. The Teensy NTIOS source can be found on the project’s GitLab server.

Michael Horn has designed and programmed a beguiling LED art installation in coordination, Refractions, with fabricators MGA Sculpture Studios. Five 7×5′ panels with embedded lighting create the illusion of waves along the static metal sculpture.

Five Teensy 4.0 boards coordinate the animation of 35′ long WS2815 strips, which recreate rippling water based on a video, but with additional randomization and enhancement to simulate a much higher frame count than memory would allow. More detail and pictures can be found on Michel’s and MGA’s respective web sites, and the project’s evolution and spellbinding culmination can be enjoyed below.

The Game Boy and Game Boy Color sold over 118,000,000 units during their decade-and-a-half reign, but in case that weren’t enough, emulators like SameBoy allow you to play games like Tetris and Pokémon Gold and Silver on your Linux, Windows, or macOS device too.

Emulating a several-MHz 8088/Z80 hybrid on several-GHz computer with gigabytes of RAM is one thing, but what about on a microcontroller? Could the Teensy 4.1’s 600 MHz Cortex-M7 and 8MB PSRAM handle this task? That’s what Ryzee119 aimed to find out with their SameBoyT4 port of the highly portable SameBoy code.

The hardware consists simply of a breadboarded PSRAM’d 4.1 with USB Host Cable and an inexpensive 320×240 ILI9341 TFT LCD display. This simple hardware stack affords support for many (but not all) SameBoy features, including loading ROMs and saves from the SD card, use of Xbox 360-style controllers, and audio. Performance is described by the developer as “not quite perfect, but pretty good in some less demanding games!” Grab the code from GitHub and the handful of parts required to make your own, and let us know what you think, as well as which games you play!

We love Ted Fried  drop-in CPU replacements for retro systems. MCL65-Fast is a little different, however, in that rather than simply emulating the Apple II’s 6502 CPU.  Arduino code runs directly on Teensy 4.1 at 800MHz+, with access to all of the device’s peripherals and slots.

In order to interact with the Apple’s video and keyboard, Ted implemented custom printf(), and scanf() functions, effectively abstracting away the legacy hardware to work like “normal” C. In the video below, a demonstration of a countdown program is shown first in cycle-accurate mode, taking around ten seconds, and then running directly on the Teensy, outputting the sequence to the Apple II’s display almost instantly. What would you do with an 800MHz Apple II? Check out the source on GitHub and find out more about the project on Ted’s blog.

DrM is a prolific creator of charge-coupled device (CCD) digital imaging projects, and the latest is a full-featured linear CCD suite with an $80 BOM cost that provides capabilities comparable to commercial instruments that might cost thousands of dollars.

On the hardware side, the Teensy 4.0’s 12-bit ADC is paired with the Toshiba TCD1304 linear image sensor, with a full-featured firmware sketch including trigger, gate, and clocking functions.

A companion Python Class library provides a command line interface for control and data collection, as well as real-time graphics. KiCad files, firmware source code, and the Python controller can all be found on GitHub, along with examples of using it as a spectrometer and for measurement of spectral-spatial-dynamics in an OLED. The output of using the sensor to record the time evolution of the spatial distribution of light produced by an OLED is displayed below.