In case you aren’t aware, the Stylophone was a stylus-controlled analog synth from the late 1960s. Originally intended as a children’s toy, it was adopted by musicians of the time like David Bowie, John Lennon, Pink Floyd, and Kraftwerk.
The Stylophone was discontinued in the mid-70s, but a revised version was released in 2007 and it remains on the market today.
Since giving one to a family member for Christmas, I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of Stylophone performance, improvements, and hacks videos. There are so many things you can do with this instrument. It’s a pretty impressive synth for the money and for something sold as a toy.
In this video, Tim Alex Jacobs shows how he went about creating the Stylocard, a Stylophone inspired business card.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
