This video captures a sneak preview of Piana software synth, currently in development, running on a Raspberry Pi computer with a Teeny Tiny TV display.

Is this the world’s smallest hardware synth? According to the developer, the entire system will be approx 3-4 cubic inches:

I wonder – is this thing really the smallest ‘real’ synth, or specifically rich functionality polysynth, in the whole wide world? There aren’t many computer platforms that can kick hard with a smaller form-factor than this, and certainly the performance per square cm of desktop area of this thing is such that it’s a leading contender for smallest synthesizer-capable computer platform. I’d like to get these tiny TVs – to be honest, stupid impulse purchases just to see if they made any sense at all – integrated in a better way. It should be possible to get a good, usable UI in place on the tiny panel, as long as if it’s context-sensitive and doesn’t try to keep everything on screen at once.

So that’s my next goal – or my next-but-one – turn the combination of Pi plus Teeny Tiny TV into something that really makes sense as a platform,

‘Raspberry Pi’ is an ARM GNU/Linux computer designed to be a complete, minimal computer system and to be extremely inexpensive (around $25).