Gadget Factory

RetroCade Synth

  • “Really Dumb” MIDI Monitor For RetroCade

    Forum member Offroad recently hit us up with an example project, which is  based on the Papilio Pro and the RetroCade Synth. He’s calling it the Really Dumb MIDI Monitor.  This deserves a bit of explanation: For starters, Offroad explains what he means by the term, “really dumb meaning: All the fun stuff like printf(“%02c”, byte) happens in…

  • Firing Up The RetroCade Synth: First Impressions

    We found another great article by Phillip Howard from Raspberry Pi @ Gadgetoid, this time on Getting Started With The Papilio RetroCade Synth. In the image above, you can see the RedroCade MegaWing plugged into its host Papilio Pro. This is the setup that Phillip used for the purposes of his article. After some initial…

  • Sale! $20 Off Papilio Pro And RetroCade Synth Bundle!

    Great news!  We’ve finally got the Papilio Pro and the RetroCade Synth in stock here at the Gadget Factory store.  To celebrate, we’re going to make you a deal. Starting today, and only for a very limited time, we’re offering TWENTY BUCKS off the Papilio Pro and the RetroCade Synth when purchased together. Call it…

  • Some Thoughts On Mixing Digital Audio

    Mixing audio in the digital realm has some inherent limitations.  These limitations become more pronounced the less data there is to work with (i.e. low sample rates etc.). We found an article by software developer and author Viktor T. Toth that addresses some of these issues. In real life, when you hear audio from two…

  • Additive Synthesis Using Altera DE2-70 FPGA

    We found an interesting video on YouTube demonstrating additive synthesis on an FPGA – in this case an Altera DE2 board. These guys have set up a MIDI controller keyboard to send note-on, note-off, and velocity for each note played to the DE2. The DE2 has been programmed with VHDL to decode the MIDI messages,…

  • Some Cool Ideas For Hacking With The RetroCade

    Hola, amigos! We found some cool videos on YouTube showing what other folks are doing with FPGA audio synthesis that we’d like to share with you. You may find some inspiration/ hacking ideas herein; these are just some of things that are possible with FPGA synths (such as our own RetroCade Synth)! There are some…

  • RetroCade Hardware Guide and User Guide Available Now; Final Hardware Launching Soon!

    In anticipation of our final RetroCade Synth hardware launching within the next couple of weeks, we wanted to take a minute and point everyone in the direction of the updated RetroCade Hardware Guide and the RetroCade User Guide: RetroCade Hardware Guide RetroCade User Guide These webpages are “works in progress” at this point, but are being…

  • 1st RetroCade Synth Prototypes! RetroCade MegaWing, Arcade MegaWing 2.0, and Papilio Pro!

    The PCB’s for the RetroCade Synth prototypes arrived early this week which was way faster then expected. I put together a bill of materials (BOM) this week and put in a parts order to verify everything. The parts arrived last night and I built the first prototypes this morning! Here is a video showing the…