We’re big fans of Ken Shirriff, as evidenced elsewhere on our blog, and we like to think he’s maybe a fan of us too, as evidenced by another Teensy-based project in the form of his IBM System/360 Model 50 mainframe marginal check console.
This tactile panel reads knobs and drives a meter over I2C, which in turn connect to Ken’s IBM 360/50 Simulator via the host Teensy 4.1.
As Ken reminds us, The IBM System/360 Model 50 was a powerful mainframe computer in 1964 that could be rented at a modern-day equivalent cost of $150,000 a month, weighed 3 tons, and used 7600 watts, yet has less than a millionth of the processing power of a modern smartphone.
The heyday of the Hi-Fi is lamentably behind us, with elaborate consoles that once took pride of place in the living room replaced by slim soundbars under TVs, or often obviated completely as tinny handheld devices become peoples’ only multimedia interface.
But if you want to add a VU meter or spectrum analyser (or both!) to your system, Mark “The Electronic Engineer” Donners has just the (Teensy-based, of course!) thing!
Mark’s solution consists of a custom PCB that houses a Teensy 4.1 (with PSRAM), our Audio Adaptor board, and dual ILI9341 displays.
Ted Fried aka MicroCore Labs is back with another Teensy-powered retro rocket! In January we featured the “world’s fastest” Commodore 64, which used Ted’s drop-in 6510 CPU replacement, the MCL64.
With the C64 already off and breaking records, it was time to turn his tuning skills on the TRS-80 Model III.
Like the MCL64, the MCLZ8 is a drop-in replacement for the machine’s original CPU, in this case the 8-bit Zilog Z80. With cycle-accurate emulation already in place, Ted is of course already scheming ways to improve performance, like moving the Model III’s RAM/ROM inside the Teensy 4.1 as well.
Encoding a file for MjpegTFT_t4 requires ffmpeg and Python, as well as the Teensy Audio Library and forked versions of the Teensy Audio Codecs and ILI9341_t3n, plus Larry Bank’s JPEGDEC library. Add a simple header and AAC audio, and you have a beautifully performant series of JPEGs on your TFT, just like the video below!
Inspired by the Shruthi Synthesizer from Mutable Instruments, German maker and synth enthusiast Rolf Degen set out to create a small, portable, Teensy 4.1-based polyphonic synthesizer.
The entire journey is documented in a 10-page thread on our forum, and represents not only Rolf’s quest to create his dream instrument, but also a great coming together of the Teensy community as folks jumped in to debug, optimize, and provide encouragement.
Rolf’s Jeannie kit produces an incredibly sophisticated 8-voice polyphonic synthesizer, with 15 banks of 63 waveforms, a waveshaper for refining the sound further, and a multimode filter with low/high/band-pass functions. A built-in 16-step sequencer transforms the synth into a tiny groovebox, capable of producing entire tracks.
Technical issues prevented a full 5-mile pass, but a shorter 3-mile run resulted in the fastest 1st, 2nd and 3rd mile speeds in the history of Bonneville Land Speed Racing, with peak GPS speeds of 447.9mph and a 3-mile average of 420mph. Watch the world’s fastest* Teensy, complete with data overlay, in the video below!
Some music producers like the hands on, computer-free, tactile experience of twiddling knobs on a modular rack. Others prefer a USB control surface connected to a PC.
The Teensy 3.6 has a USB host port (requires soldering of pins and USB Host Cable), and the ability to read and write voltages, as required to interface with a Eurorack system. This makes it the perfect intermediary between the two, and completely obviates the need for a computer.
With the addition of some 1k resistors and standard 3.5mm Eurorack sockets, plus code to read and store button presses in an array, a simple yet effective pattern sequencer can be realized. Additional detail can be found on Sebastian’s blog, while the example code resides on GitHub, and a sequencing demo can be found in the video below.
NOTE: PJRC recommends caution when interfacing Eurorack signals with Teensy. The Teensy 3.6 pins can be damaged by voltage higher than 3.3 volts, or below ground. Many Eurorack modules use -5V to +5V or -10V to +10V signals. Opamps, buffers, or other circuitry are typically needed to safely connect these higher voltage signals to Teensy’s pins.
One of the most exciting aspects of the maker movement is its ability to empower individual enthusiasts with technology that was once the realm of large corporations and universities. A particularly impressive example of this phenomenon is McGill University Physics PhD student Dan Berard’s Teensy 3.1-based low-cost scanning tunneling microscope (STM) project.
Using a cheap piezo buzzer, Dan has accomplished atomic resolution with select materials, using a manually sharpened tip.
For his latest project, he ditched the retrocomputing angle and went full futurism, using a Teensy 3.1 as the basis of his Dystopian Drone.
The Teensy outputs a continuously-evolving synthesized saw wave sound, which is then broadcast worldwide at http://echo.lurk.org:999/ef1j.mp3 as well as locally on 89.3 FM via a simple external transmitter. The result is deliciously chilling, and provided the perfect sinister soundbath for the authoring of this blog post.
UK-based engineer and YouTuber Tom Stanton had a dream: to dress up and launch sausages at ungodly speeds. Well, maybe that wasn’t the original dream, but it’s somehow where things ended up?!
As reported on our own forums, Stanton designed and built an incredibly impressive Teensy 3.5-based Electromagnetic Rail Launcher, consisting of a linear motor (as opposed to the more typical circular examples which rotate a shaft) and a track down which magnetic material can be propelled.
Said material might be a paper airplane (via magnetic sled), or, as alluded to earlier…a sausage with googly eyes and a smile.
Watch both below, along with a second video showing a more optimized version launching a sturdier 3d-printed aircraft.
