Erica Synths has introduced the Pikocore, a lo-fi music mangler developed by Zack Scholl that’s available as a DIY kit.
Here’s what they have to say about it:
“The original DIY kit comes in a miniature pocket calculator form factor, but we at Erica Synths wanted to make it more playable, so we reached out to Zack and developed Pikocore XL version that has identical functionality, but comes in Erica Synths signature hands on user interface and proper aluminum enclosure.
Infinite Digits Pikocore XL by Erica Synths is a full DIY kit that includes all components to build an instrument and put in in action straight away.”
Features:
- A lo-fi music mangler based on the Raspberry Pi Pico.
- Capable of holding 8 minutes of 8-bit 33 kHz monophonic samples.
- Powered by a single alkaline AAA battery for up to 3 hours or by powered by USB-C.
- Tempo-synced with a selectable BPM between 60 and 300, with samples mangled by beat-synced effects (stutter, retrig, gate, tunneling).
- Loaded with real-time effects like a resonant filter, timestretching, volume, and wavefolding.
- Sequenced with a 128-step sequencer with recording/playback
- Saved and loaded via EEPROM for instant patch recall.
- Able to load custom firmware, new samples, all through USB-C.
- Sync-compatible with Pocket Operators.
- Open-source, hackable.
Pricing and Availability:
The Pikocore is available now for € 160.00.
Based on raspberry pi Pico, for 160. Diy kit even.
Almost would expect a lot of trolling on this post…?
I say the more lofi battery powered sample mangler, the better .
The guy that made this (InfiniteDigits) has made incredibly generous open-source contributions to the monome community (among other projects, but that’s what I know him from). I wish him anything but people complaining about the 160 bucks that this thing costs.
idk, it’s hard to knock them for doing out of the box work. plus the black panels and legible labeling are hard to beat. i was interested in the steamengine box they did, but MIDI/desktop is not my thing. if they did a eurorack version, 70-84HP or something, then i would look at it seriously.
I’m buying the assembled unit for sure. I don’t think it’s expensive at all.
Seems well built, it has a lot of features and sounds good enough for me.
Development, design, testing, … I think it is only fair that people get paid for their work and their time.
My only (petty) complain is that I wish it had more sound mangling options and a couple more physical control about parameters.
I don’t generally hold a grudge against Erica for being terrible at naming things. It’s part of their charm. But for the love of god, I will take terrible baffling Latvian names over obvious chatgpt drivel any day of the week.
Pikocore is bad name?
https://www.thonk.co.uk/shop/infinite-digits-pikocore/
It’s based on this which was already called a pikocore. Has a raspberry pi Pico as it’s core.
Ok Don. I can’t find any info on this product before late 2023/early 2024. So I’m gonna stand by my assertion that Chatgpt named it. Using the “-core” suffix in a product name is akin to using “delve” in a research paper. It’s ai-coded language that would set off even the most basic ai-detection tools.
Are you a basic ai-detection tool? Cause it seems to have set you off :S
Good one 🙂
AI doesn’t need to be human, people are doing that job for it.