EuroPi Series | What is a EuroPi and why you need (probably more than) one in your rack!

[@TheScreamingFrog916]

Almost finished building two of them, just waiting for displays to arrive 😊 Thinking I might want to learn how to write my own script for them. Looking forward to playing with them 🎉 Thanks for the demonstration, and best wishes for your continued success ❤

[@ModularExploration]

Thanks for your kind words. Good luck finishing your builds. I'm sure you will have fun with them. The EuroPi platform is quite straightforward to develop scripts for. Plus if you need any help you can always reach out on the Allen Synthesis discord 👍

[@kevindewinter8235]

I will have 2 soon :)

[@ModularExploration]

Cool!

[@IrregularShed]

This video came up in my KZbin suggestions last night. Before I'd finished watching it I'd scoped out the project and uploaded the file to get a set of PCBs manufactured. Thanks for highlighting it, thanks Allen Synthesis for creating it and thanks KZbin Algorithm Gods for prodding it in my direction!

[@ModularExploration]

That's a great story! I'm glad the KZbin algorithm worked well for you! Thanks for your comment.

[@ricksanders]

Hi, good video, thanks. Is it a known issue / bug (?) that with an external clock input when the bpm from the external clock comes below 60 bpm, the bpm reading on the europi stays put at 60 while the actual bpm output follows correctly ?

[@ModularExploration]

HI Rick, thanks for your comment. Within the master clock script a minimum and maximum BPM are hard-coded as 20 and 240 respectively. However, you may have found a small bug in the way that the detected BPM is presented on the screen. I will take a look at this when I next perform updates to the code.

[@ricksanders]

Is there a chance that there will be an script update to have all divisions start/reset on the first clock tick/beat at every start? For both interal and external clock. That would be a great addition.

[@ModularExploration]

Thanks for your thoughts Rick. The module already does this after a timeout of (I think) 2 seconds... I need to check the code. You can also use the digital input as a reset when using the internal clock.

[@ricksanders]

@@ModularExploration Let me go try again today but untill now my experience using external clock input is that div /2 starts at 2nd count of 1st beat, div /4 starts at 4th count of the 1st beat etc. As such it is difficult to use the different outputs to do changes in sync on 1st count of a beat 🤔

[@ModularExploration]

@@ricksanders Ah I think I misunderstood your initial suggestion. So if you set a division of /4 you would want to outputs gates on step 1,5,9 etc rather than 4,8,12 as it does currently? This makes sense and would be a very small code change. It would take a while for the change to be made available in the firmware. However, I could guide you through making a small code change to implement the change if you like?

[@ricksanders]

Indeed, that is what I meant. For the /4/8/16/32/64/128 divs to output a gate on step 1, 5, 9, 17, 33, 65, 129 🙂 I dont have any micropython experience but would love to try adapt the script, following your instructions as you propose ✌️

[@ModularExploration]

I really like this suggestion, so I went ahead and made the update in my code repo fork. You can find the updated file in the link below. To update your EuroPi, simply open the lib/contrib/master_clock.py file in Thonny, paste the new code from the link below, then choose save-as and save it to the Raspberry Pi. Please let me know how you get on. If your testing goes well, I will create a PR to hopefully get this into the next EuroPi firmware release. github.com/gamecat69/EuroPiApps/blob/master-clock-aug-23/software/contrib/master_clock.py

[@vanDCreative]

This would be so useful for the synth im building, I may end up using my own pi and building a module around it, but I may take inspiration from this module if I do end up making something like this. I’m currently in the process of building my own analogue synth from scratch, I have the circuit for a VCO and I’m actually watching KZbin while I build it. I’ll be making more modules but I’m starting off with a vco

[@ModularExploration]

That sounds like a great project! The EuroPi is great as a modulation, trigger or gate source. There is also a script that uses PIO to create a six-square oscillator called the poly square!

[@MetricNotStandard]

Could one of the I2C connections be used in conjunction with a new script to allow the EuroPi to be controlled by Teletype? I ordered the module, now I guess I have to learn python. Thanks for the great series!

[@ModularExploration]

Thanks for your feedback! The I2C connection can be used with lots of I2C compatible controllers and sensors (I have a few ideas in my backlog that I rarely get time to work on these days!). You will need to write all the I2C handling code yourself though, as currently there is not much in the EuroPi firmware to accelerate that at the moment. I hope you enjoy playing with your EuroPi as much as I do. Good luck on your Python learning journey too.

[@andrometer2382]

I’m taking that as a no But it’s exactly the same question I wanted to ask

[@FSK1138]

can this do sample playback? or audio fx?

[@ModularExploration]

No, unfortunately not. The EuroPi is not capable of clean audio rate processing - micropython is not fast enough for this.

[@streamtracker]

Will this be available as a full kit?

[@ModularExploration]

Hi, thanks for your comment. They are available as kits from Thonk and as PCB and panel sets from Synthcube. You can also find some built ones on EBay and Reverb.