[DIY] How to Make a FPGA-based Electric Composer

Hello FPGA enthusiasts! Today’s project takes sound production using FPGA to another level. The project under focus is building an electric keyboard/composer using FPGA. The keyboard acts as a song tune composer where a network of switches on the FPGA board is connected in precedence such that while a switch is on, the corresponding note plays.

The major hardware components needed are just a FPGA board (you may need  to adapt this project to your own board), a speaker capable of playing a wide range of frequencies, and not just a monotone, and an auxiliary cable or suitable wires for connecting the speaker to the FPGA board.

The coding has been done using Xilinx ISE in the VHDL (.vhd). The author has given a detailed pin assignment as well as a basic VHDL background explanation. The code has been shared from step 5 to 9 and each module has been well explained by the author. The modules basically consist of a frequency division for playing different frequencies of sound and process statements for fixing parameters like precedence and sensitivity.

Setting the port map and executing the program has been explained in steps 10 and 11. By switching different switches you get different tones, though combinational tones cannot be made since precedence is followed.

The show must go on!

By krosenfeld7