OWL Programmable Effects Pedal Is Open Source + Open Hardware

owl-programmable-effects-pedalThe OWL is an open source, open hardware, reprogrammable effects pedal designed for musicians, coders, and hackers.

With some coding and DSP knowledge, the OWL can become any kind of audio effect that you can imagine. Effects can be combined in any number of ways by chaining or switching between them.

Key Features:

  • For musicians:
    • Load patches from your computer via USB
    • Collection of sample patches available and growing
    • Standard guitar pedal inputs/outputs
  • For developers:
    • Write code for a hardware DSP architecture in plain C/C++
    • no hardware specific coding required
    • Open source platform and tool chain
    • Access to all low level ARM functions

Here’s the project intro video:

Using a provided C++ framework, effects can be developed, compiled and loaded to the on-board ARM Cortex M4 chip with no proprietary tools or hardware-specific knowledge.

The OWL gives coders the chance to implement their own effects and become part of an open-source audio developer community. For those who don’t write code, there is a growing collection of patches available for immediate download and use in the patch library.

Details on the OWL are available at the project site.

7 thoughts on “OWL Programmable Effects Pedal Is Open Source + Open Hardware

  1. An effects pedal that could run VSTs (with knobs assignable to various parameters) would be interesting – it’s fussy to make a laptop part of your guitar rig.

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