Tweet
Originally posted Aug 11th 2011 6:05 A.M. by Brian Benchoff
Sprite_tm is back again, and his work never fails to impress. His latest project is a Game Boy Advance MIDI synth that takes MIDI data from a keyboard or sequencer and maps that to Game Boy sound channels.
Because he seems to never do anything the normal way, Sprite_tm decided to run the Game Boy without a cartridge. We’ve seen this before; the GBA boots into the synth software over the link cable with multi-booting.
Sprite_tm designed a circuit around an ATMega168 to boot the Game Boy, receive MIDI messages, then translate and send them through the link port. The main Game Boy code also has a simple interface to display graphics on the screen, and a sequencer that allows him to record MIDI messages into 8 different tracks.
We’re thinking that being able to sequence Game Boy chiptunes with a keyboard is a huge improvement over Little Sound DJ.
As Sprite_tm freely admits he’s not the best keyboard player, he gave his GBA synth to a musician friend. The resulting song is a veritable deluge of 8 bit chiptunes. The electronics behind this build are very simple (and can fit inside a MIDI cable), so we’re ready to break out the iron for this one.
All the relevant code is posted on Sprite_tm‘s build page. There’s also a video walking through the features of his creation, viewable below.
Sprite_tm is back again, and his work never fails to impress. His latest project is a Game Boy Advance MIDI synth that takes MIDI data from a keyboard or sequencer and maps that to Game Boy sound channels.
Because he seems to never do anything the normal way, Sprite_tm decided to run the Game Boy without a cartridge. We’ve seen this before; the GBA boots into the synth software over the link cable with multi-booting.
Sprite_tm designed a circuit around an ATMega168 to boot the Game Boy, receive MIDI messages, then translate and send them through the link port. The main Game Boy code also has a simple interface to display graphics on the screen, and a sequencer that allows him to record MIDI messages into 8 different tracks.
We’re thinking that being able to sequence Game Boy chiptunes with a keyboard is a huge improvement over Little Sound DJ.
As Sprite_tm freely admits he’s not the best keyboard player, he gave his GBA synth to a musician friend. The resulting song is a veritable deluge of 8 bit chiptunes. The electronics behind this build are very simple (and can fit inside a MIDI cable), so we’re ready to break out the iron for this one.
All the relevant code is posted on Sprite_tm‘s build page. There’s also a video walking through the features of his creation, viewable below.