Ever dreamed of being able to program your own DSP hardware as easily as you can connect custom effects on your computer? Earlier this summer, we saw the open source OpenStomp effects pedal. Then, information was scant and we hadn’t seen an actual unit. Now, the box is going into production for North America at US$349, available for purchase right now.

The magic inside is Parallax’s Propeller CPU core. If anything kick starts a DIY revolution for DSP hardware, this could be it. The software is Windows-only, but Mac users, could be a good reason to install Windows dual-boot; there’s a graphical interface for programming custom effects, vocoders, or whatever you like.

Effects so far, which come GPL3-licensed as open source patches:

• Tremolo
• Chorus
• Distortion
• Delay
• Tunstuff (Layered repeat loop)
• Test Tone
• Pong w/source

And it gets better: because of its use of the Propeller, video features are possible, too. (Yep, this could be a video stompbox — I’ll have to unleash our Create Digital Motion readers on that.)

I hope to have a chat with the creators so we can cover this in more detail; if you have questions you’d want answered, leave them in comments and stay tuned for a full-blown CDM feature.

OpenStomp Project Page + Details
Online Store

Previous round-up: Guitar Pedals Go DIY, Open Source

Via MusicRadar.com and several of you who sent this in! (Okay, stop with the awesomeness, already! We’re going to have to run like a dozen stories today. I need to eventually get out of the house!)

Lo-fi Arduino Guitar Pedal from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo.

CDM regular Kyle McDonald keeps cranking out wonderful projects. Following up on a tangible music sequencer powered by Skittles (taste the rainbow of fruity beats), and last week’s cheap-but-effective DIY 3D interface, he’s now put the popular DIY electronics platform Arduino to work as a lo-fi effect. He writes:

There have been a bunch of projects bent on getting audio out of the Arduino, using them as synths — even Lady Ada’s more recent Wave Shield (http://www.ladyada.net/make/waveshield/). A friend of mine was looking for a sample rate reducing/bit crushing pedal, and I thought "I could probably do that with an Arduino". It turns out the audio isn’t as terrible as you’d expect (except when you want it to sound terrible!) so I put together an instructable for anyone interested in making their own.

http://vimeo.com/1460684

http://www.instructables.com/id/Lo_fi_Arduino_Guitar_Pedal/

Kyle’s site, complete with lots of other projects

Great stuff! Of course, the advanctage of these lo-fi digital effects is just that – they’re cheap digital effects to achieve. But this makes me wonder, will anyone be able to hack these effects for some twists of their own?