Motherboard

A hardware and firmware platform aiming to facilitate fast and easy development of Eurorack modular synthesizers.

Notes:

• PCBs only, the audio DAC PCB has all the SMD components already soldered on.
• Orders get shipped within 3 days.

Features

• 16 analog inputs (12 bits, 5v, 44.1kHz)
• 16 outputs (8bits Binary Code Modulation)
• 2 audio channels over I2S or 8 channels over TDM
• I2C to expand with analog outputs and more
• MIDI in and out
• 10 pin Eurorack either way power
• Through hole and SMD for most footprints
• Teensy 4.0

The idea

Wether analog or digital, often modules are designed from scratch as one-offs creations. This means going through the same challenges and solving them in slightly different ways. It’s possible to do better and not reinvent the wheel every time.

By separating the functional circuitry from the user interface circuitry, a pattern will emerge and make it possible to reuse at least a few things.

With analog it is more difficult to achieve as the circuit is very much dependent on the inputs and outputs, but it would still be possible to have a generic user interface connected to a specific functional circuit.

With digital this gets interesting. The functional circuit can be completely generic and be reused for many modules, simply reading inputs and generating outputs, it doesn’t need to be designed around the final module. The low level code can be generic and reused too, while the high level code would be specific to each module.