Hasta La Gadget!

A few years ago we featured a harmonica crammed into a NES cartridge. YouTuber basami sentaku’s harmonica not only has a Famicom cartridge case, it produces 8-bit sound with the help of a sound chip from a NES. It also has a mode that plays the coin sound effect from Super Mario Bros. when you blow into it.

Watch basami sentaku and his friends play some chiptunes on the harmonica:

I’d love to hear non-video game music played on that. Basami sentaku-san, I’m sure you’d make a lot of chiptune fans happy if you started selling 8bit harmonicas.

[via Viral Viral Videos]

The Pianocade is the embodiment of chiptune music. It’s a synthesizer that looks and works like an arcade controller, down to the analog joystick and token buttons.

But the Pianocade’s gamer theme isn’t just skin deep. It’s open source, hacker-friendly synthesizer board is based on the NES and Game Boy sound hardware, so it makes the monophonic pings and blips out of the box. Here’s a demo of the Pianocade’s features:

And here’s the Pianocade being used by Shaun Hatton aka Megashaun to play live:

Portmanteau Devices is selling one- and two-octave variants of the Pianocade; the former costs about $250 (USD) and the latter is about $350. You can also pre-order just the electronics for about $100.

Portmanteau Devices said that they will try to make the Pianocade also work as a USB game controller out of the box, but that’s not their priority right now. They did say that they might release a firmware update later on if they can’t do it by the time the device is released. Perhaps one of you clever hackers will even do the job for them.

[via Engadget]

Tired of the same-old DJ equipment or chiptune gear? Then may want to consider this new and unique piece of kit from Toronto-based Portmanteau Devices. Dubbed the Pianocade, it’s a synthesizer and MIDI controller that, as you can see, is disguised as an arcade authentic joystick (albeit one with quite a few extra buttons). Naturally, it’s also designed to be fully hackable and customizable (both the hardware and software are open source), and it even includes some strap mounts so you can wear it like a keytar. Sadly, the one thing it can’t be used for at the moment is an actual USB joystick, although Portmanteau hopes to add that feature before it ships, or roll out a firmware upgrade later failing that. Those interested can get their pre-orders in now for $250 or $325 Canadian for the one and two octave models, respectively, with shipments are expected to go out 8-12 weeks after the end of the pre-order period on September 14th. An electronics only package is also available for $100 if you’d prefer to build your own. Head on past the break to check it out in action.

Continue reading Pianocade synthesizer lets DJs practice their shoryuken skills

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Pianocade synthesizer lets DJs practice their shoryuken skills originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 21 Aug 2012 23:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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