Harmonicade: Arcade Button Synth

The Harmonicade is an impressive synth made of over 200 arcade buttons, a Teensy 3.6 and a lot of 3D printing.

The person behind KOOP Instruments wanted to learn to make music, but the traditional piano layout didn’t suit him. So, he started making his own range of musical midi devices, which are now all immaculately written up and shared over on the KOOP Instruments site.

The Harmonicade is a multi-channel MIDI keyboard using arcade push-buttons in a Wicki-Hayden style button layout, a musical keyboard layout based on hexagons. It uses over 200 arcade buttons feeding into a single Teensy 3.6 via two sets of DB25 connectors – an ingenious solution to his wiring problem!

As with all the other KOOP Instruments releases, the Harmonicade has been impeccably documented, including step-by-step build instructions with detailed wiring instructions, 3D modelling files, and helpfully commented code.

You can also read a write up of the Harmonicade on the Hackaday blog.