EuroPi VS TinyGo

Hi all, I'm making a Eurorack sequencer module with 4 pitch CV outputs (NOT audio) and I've noticed that DACs are kind of a pain due to being expensive, SMT-only & still requiring buffering with op amps. I figure that a good alternative would be to buy a Raspberry Pi Pico for $4 which will give me 8 PWM outputs that I would then hook up to an output stage like the one in the europi (shown here: https://github.com/Allen-Synthesis/EuroPi/blob/main/hardware/EuroPi/schematic/europi_schematic.pdf)

Bom has links for sourcing parts

Up until now I've been using the analog input stage from the EuroPi schematic as my model for a CV in. You can see it here:

There is no super cheap way to get a lot of analog outputs from an MCU. Filtered PWM is your best bet for cost effectiveness (I recommend looking at the EuroPi from allen synthesis : https://github.com/Allen-Synthesis/EuroPi). Otherwise if PWM doesn't work for you, you'll need to look into DAC chips. The MCP4728 is a good spot to start, it's 12-bit and has 4 channels: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4470. Since it's I2C controlled you can have multiple of them on one bus. Maybe looking into a 16 channel PWM driver for a lot of outputs: https://www.adafruit.com/product/815. Hope this helps!

The project is completely open-source and open hardware, and the contributors together have made this big list of scripts that you can run using a menu system!

The project is entirely open-source but I do also sell the Panel+PCBs on my site!

Check out the EuroPi project https://github.com/Allen-Synthesis/EuroPi

EuroPi Turing Machine script is feeding the Uncertainty cv input with pulse 1 opening an envelope on Maths for voice 1 & 2, pulse 2 opens the second Maths envelope for sub osc voice 3. A little delay added for texture. That's pretty much it!

EuroPi - A reprogrammable Eurorack module based on the Raspberry Pi Pico

The patch.init() is still a great way to start, but you could save some money ditching the audio i/o and build yourself an EuroPi. However, that requires DIY, obviously.

Reading through the documentation, you will understand why this plugin is called "tiny," i.e., the SDK uses the TinyGo compiler instead of the official Go compiler. You can read more about why this is the case on the SDK\'s overview page, but the TLDR version is that the Go compiler can only produce Wasm binaries that run in the browser.

Not only you can fit Go into a kernel, there is at least two products that do so.

TamaGo, used to write the firmware used in USB armory.

https://www.withsecure.com/en/solutions/innovative-security-...

TinyGo, which even has official Arduino and ARM support, and is sponsored by Google

https://tinygo.org/

Ah but that isn't proper Go! Well neither is the C code that is allowed to be used in typical kernel code, almost nothing from ISO C standard library is available, and usually plenty of compiler specific language extensions are used instead.

Reminds me of https://tinygo.org/ - a project that brings Golang to embedded devices, browser (wasm) contexts. Do you converge or diverge from that project?

You should also consider TinyGo. It can compile Go for the Pico, and is starting to get good device support.

Thankfully some folks completly ignored whatever the rest of the world thinks system programming is all about and created:

- TinyGo (https://tinygo.org/), which is acknowledged by people in the industry[0][1]

- TamaGo unikernel on USB Armory secure key (https://www.withsecure.com/de/solutions/innovative-security-...)

And then there is the question if writing compilers, assemblers, linkers is systems programming or not.

[0]-https://www.cnx-software.com/2019/08/28/tinygo-go-compiler-f...

[1]-https://twitter.com/ArmSoftwareDev/status/131680481331796787...

Have you seen TinyGo? In the case of embedded system I would probably still chose C over Rust if the system didn't support dynamic memory allocation, and most embedded systems do not.

>I really hate how for microcontrollers the only two choices are either C++ or Micropython

There's TinyGo as well. https://tinygo.org/