New Synthesizer – The Hack Me Sprockit

Sprockit Synthesizer

Matt Heins of Hack Me Electronics has announced a new synth for 2012, the Sprockit mini-synth.

Sprockit is a pint-sized version of Hack Me’s Rockit synth.

Sprockit features include:

  • Two oscillators – Just like Rockit, except there’s only one knob. There are currently 32 oscillator settings, which choose both oscillator 1 and 2 and the oscillator mix at the same time. Oscillator 2 still has a detune knob.
  • 4-pole Analog Low Pass Filter – Instead of Rockit’s three-mode filter, Sprockit has a 4-pole Low Pass only filter. Filter envelope control is accessible externally. There is no external audio input like Rockit.
  • 1 LFO with 3 waveshapes and 3 destinations, with more shapes and destinations accessible externally.
  • ADSR envelope with Attack and Decay control on board and everything else externally accessible
  • MIDI Input – No MIDI output.

Here’s what Heins has to say about the Sprockit synthesizer:

My goal with Sprockit it to take a lot of Rockit goodness and compress it down to something smaller and a bit cheaper. I’m achieving both goals by having a very dense design and by reducing some of the features.

Sprockit is 4?x4? versus Rockit’s 5.1?x8.6?, so it’s substantially smaller, like pocket sized (I would’ve called it Pockit Rockit, but there are some products out there already). There are obviously fewer knobs, LEDs, and switches. All of the control parameters are still there though and will be accessible via an external MIDI controller.

The microcontroller is downsized from an ATMEGA644 to an ATMEGA328. I’m also incorporating a lot of the things that I’ve learned from doing Rockit and rolling those improvements into Sprockit. This image is my first prototype and I’m well into prototype two, which will be much improved.

Heins is planning to have Sprockit ready for a workshop with Dorkbot Chicago at the end of February.

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