Gadget Factory

Jack Gassett

  • Jerri Ellsworth uses Papilio in C64 Keytar!

    Hello everyone, The amazing Jerri Ellsworth just released a video that show the internals of her C64 Bass Keytar, as seen at Maker Faire. We were happy to see that she used a Papilio board as the heart of the system!  It’s the same Papilio that is at the heart of the RetroCade Synth!  …

  • SoundPuddle: Art installation driven by ZPUino on Papilio!

    John English of Boulder Engineering Studio put together an art installation titled, “Sound Puddle” for the Apogaea Festival in Colorado. Since he needed to drive 1664 RGB LED’s with 10 SPI masters, all at the same time, he decided on using the Papilio FPGA board. Alvaro Lopes heard about the project and was quick to…

  • Introducing the RetroCade Synth! A Papilio based chiptune synth on Kickstarter now!

    It’s been quiet on the blog for the last couple of weeks, which is usually a sign that something big is in the works! 🙂 In this case, we’ve been working overtime to put together a Kickstarter project for the RetroCade Synth. The RetroCade Synth puts classic arcade audio chips like the Commodore SID and…

  • Coming Soon! Atari 2600 on the Papilio Arcade.

    Good news, the Open Source Atari 2600 project, A2601, is now working on the Papilio Arcade hardware. We got some time to work on the NTSC to VGA conversion and we have some video of the A2601 with VGA output in action. We hope to have the code cleaned up and ready for release very…

  • Blob Tracking with $10 Camera Module on Papilio

    Voelker is at it again! It seems like just the other day that he shared with us his breakthrough of getting a cheap $10 camera working with the Papilio. Who needs rest when there are so many exciting Computer Vision applications to be hacked, not Voelker, he’s hard at work on Sobel Filters and Blob…

  • Papilio as a YM2149 MIDI Synthesizer!

    While browsing through past HackaDay articles looking for projects to spark the imagination we noticed a trend. It seems that people are keen on connecting the audio chips from old computer and arcade games to their Arduino! Especially the YM2149 which is a popular audio chip that was used in the Atari ST, ZX Spectrum…

  • Stand Alone YM Music Player with ZPUino 1.0 release.

    Hey everyone! To celebrate the release of the new MIDI Audio Wing and ZPUino 1.0 we are releasing a slew of new audio examples. In fact, we made a whole new Wiki dedicated to audio applications for the Papilio. Check it out over at http://audio.GadgetFactory.net. The first example is a stand alone ym player that…

  • New Wing: MIDI Audio Wing

    For anyone who wants to explore FPGA synthesizers, make MIDI controlled instruments, or just play with audio in general this Wing is for you! Available now in the Gadget Factory store for just $14.99 We’ve been playing with audio for a couple months now and are finally ready to release this hardware and several exciting…