Chipophone is the chiptune organ that you've always wanted

This is no ordinary electric organ, my friend. Swedish software engineer Linus Åkesson loves chiptune so much (don't we all?) that he felt the urge to convert this old-school instrument into an 8-bit synthesizer. By rewiring the keys, pedals and buttons to a couple of microcontrollers (which isn't quite our usual weekend project in the garage), the reborn organ -- dubbed the Chipophone -- can now reproduce classic hits like Super Mario Bros' theme tune on the fly. Oh, and you can even record loops and change their tempo on this bad boy. We're not sure if Linus is planning on publishing the full details of his fabulous mod, but he'll be performing here all week anyway. Well, on YouTube at least -- check him out after the break.

[hwkr Posted Jul 24th 2010 6:59PM]

@CallDon You are missing the point... Chipophone is a synthesizer, not only a MIDI keyboard. The sound is generated with the 8-bit ATmega88 chip running at 20MHz. The MIDI conversion is of course easy, but to synthesize multichannel music with that hardware isn't the easiest task...

[BlkRb0t Posted Jul 24th 2010 2:53PM]

I will abduct this guy.

[ROFL Posted Jul 25th 2010 3:36PM]

@BlkRb0t Sweet!

[tompccs Posted Jul 24th 2010 3:13PM]

Anyone who plays this surely lives alone....fair tradeoff?

[jaycustom Posted Jul 24th 2010 6:54PM]

Wow. I never liked or played the organ, but that thing is way cool. I could see myself sitting there for hours droppin' some beats.
The organ needs a makeover though, to make it look more like it sounds.

[nparikh1982 Posted Jul 24th 2010 11:50PM]

I seriously want this guy to play at my mar mitzvah.

[nparikh1982 Posted Jul 24th 2010 11:51PM]

@nparikh1982

I meant bar mitvah.

[Charmaine Posted Jul 28th 2010 5:55AM]

He is a genius. It is not easy to transform an analogue organ into a synthesizer.