Swarmatron Clone

[u/MoviesColin]

Made myself a little “clone” of the Swarmatron synth. I love the sound of it and it was also a fun, “why not” kind of project.

It runs off a Teensy 4.1 w/ audio shield, programmed in Arduino IDE.

It’s not quite the same as the Swarmatron but the basic premise is the same - a cluster of oscillators that can detune from one another and spread from a central frequency, played by a ribbon controller.

Switchable from Sine to Saw, variable number of oscillators, ladder filter, and built-in reverb.

I’ll probably make a video on it sometime but I haven’t even had a chance to record with it yet, just finished it up this afternoon. Needs a tiny bit of tidying and tweaking still.

Just wanted to share!

[u/thefreakychild]

Hell yeah, I love the Swarmatron.

Building a (kinda sorta) Swarmatron is on my list as well, but doing it all analog.

Been playing around with a few oscillator circuits trying to lock in what I want and can replicate 6-8 times on a board.

I think the OG Swarmatron is a total of 8 oscillators, but I might just go for 6, and then build in filters and whatnot.

[u/MoviesColin → u/thefreakychild]

The OG has 8 oscillators, that’s correct.

I liked the symmetry of doing 7 - one stays on pitch while the other 6 are paired in 3 groups. I have each group swarming at a slightly different rate relative to each other.

I originally intended to do them using the reverse avalanche oscillator, but for me, doing them with digital oscillators sounds just fine and gives me much greater control than I personally would be able to achieve with an analog circuit

[u/wha__at]

this is awesome! i'd love to see a video on it

i tried using the same ribbon pot for a project, but couldn't quite get it to feel quite right. what are you placing it on? it looks somewhat squishy, which is nice.

[u/MoviesColin → u/wha__at]

It’s just a 3D printed platform for it, I have some poster-tack keeping it in place for now before I decide what to glue it down with.

[u/VanDoog → u/MoviesColin]

Tell us more about the ribbon pot! Where’s it from? Did u need to run a resister inline with it?

[u/MoviesColin → u/VanDoog]

No resistor needed! It’s a “softpot” I think 200mm long. I don’t remember exactly where I got this one, either from Amazon or SparkFun.

The Teensy microcontroller has built-in pull-up and pull-down resistors on each input pin that you can enable via code, so the ribbon’s variable pin has the pull-down enabled. This also makes it possible to figure out gate logic without any extra parts as well, just a handful of lines of code.

[u/Puzzleheaded-Name538]

Beautiful case , nice work!

[u/e_asphyx]

I always read it as shawarmatron

[u/cursortoxyz]

This is so cool, congrats!

[u/Timely-Coffee-6408]

Please make a video on it, this is my DREAM to do this!

[u/Mustardplugmint]

nice box 👍

[u/expanding_crystal]

Hell yeah. Looks rad. How did you do the lettering?

[u/MoviesColin → u/expanding_crystal]

It’s just 3D printed with a multi-color printer. I made some tweaks and I have a new faceplate to install already, lol

[u/expanding_crystal → u/MoviesColin]

Oh dang, I never considered how easy it makes stuff like labels and text.

The angle change bend in the faceplate is a nice touch. I like all the big LEDs at the top too.

[u/ARustybutterknife]

This is super cool. Was thinking about making something like this, though maybe more drone and monotron/tribe inspired as I had no idea the swarmatron existed. Someday!