Bananaphone: A Touch Capacitance Synth

Aw hell yeah, Bananaphone!

I was recently inspired by a Kickstart project which used Bananas as sensors to control a video game on a PC.  I’ve done some video game controls using the Propeller in the past, but I thought this would make an interesting synthesizer project.

Window-154

Parallax Propeller Quickstart USB Development Board. The QuickStart is an evaluation board for the 8-Core Parallax Propeller. As an open-source reference design the QuickStart board provides basic Propeller circuitry. Developers may use our PCB layout files as their own to speed their project towards completion. As a project board the QuickStart is fully expandable and provides unimpeded access to all I/O pins through an expansion header but includes some button inputs and LEDs to demonstrate programming. With USB power and a selection of QuickStart Project examples it’s also the fastest way to get up and running.

Examples at Parallax Semiconductor:

Features:

  • Open hardware reference design through our Altium and DipTrace PCB layout files (more export options may be possible)
  • Bus-powered USB coupled with 3.3V regulator for 500 mA
  • 5 mHz cyrstal on board may be disabled by removing SMT jumper, allowing replacement with external through-hole crystal
  • 64KB EEPROM (32K for P8X32A program, 32K for general-purpose use)
  • External brownout reset may be installed by removing SMT jumper
  • (8) blue LEDs on P16-P23
  • (8) resistive touch-buttons on P0-P7
  • Pads for sigma-delta A/D circuitry (two resistors and two capacitors, both 0603) for using the Sigma-Delta A/D AppNote
  • Expansion header provides access to Vss, Vdd, 32 I/O pins (28 for any use, 2 are I2C bus, and two are optional Tx/Rx if connected to USB power)
  • Measures 2″ x 3″ (5.1 cm x 7.6 cm)

This board doesn’t come with a mini-B USB cable or bumpers, but we stock them in the shop so you may want to pick those up.

In stock and Propelling now!

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2 Comments

  1. Daniel
    May 17, 2012 at 1:22 pm

    http://t.co/RZwwWsxl

  2. zuul
    May 17, 2012 at 2:18 pm

    Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring… Bananaphone!

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Filed under: propeller — by Becky Stern

Comments (2)