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Kuensa - A Handy Music Sequencer

A small portable and handy music sequencer built on Raspberry Pi Pico

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Kuensa is a small portable music sequencer which can be connected to USB MIDI and brought out whenever inspiration hits on the go. The computing is done on a Raspberry Pico RP2040 and the audio is handled by a dream SAM2695 module. The device also has serial MIDI I/O to communicate with other devices as desired.

Internally it contains a lithium ion battery which is recharged via a USB module. Plus it's also got an SD card slot for saving work.

This video has a description of Kuensa and a demonstration of some of the current capabilities:

The main idea with Kuensa is to have a convenient tool for portable music making and practising. Part of the plan was to make the device as distraction free as possible, thus allowing someone to concentrate on the playing rather rather have hundreds of features intruding into the mental image.

I get caught into trying to squeeze as much out of the text display and tactile buttons,  but so far, it's decently usable. I really enjoy the idea of just turning on and jamming away, rather than boot up a computer, load software and suffer from all the other computer things without much musical productivity.

Features which are available so far: 

  • Play, Stop and Record on multiple tracks (but record only one track at a time)
  • Load, Save songs
  • Metronome with tempo adjustment
  • Mute tracks
  • Configure track instruments (so far this is in a config file)
  • Beat counter on the display
  • MIDI monitor via LED
  • MIDI serial I/O for connecting to other sound devices 

Other sequencer features are also under consideration, but I would not want to veer too far from the current simplicity and fun factor.

  • 1 × Raspberry Pi Pico
  • 1 × Li ion charger module single cell with no battery protection (it's in the battery)
  • 1 × 5v boost module
  • 1 × 4x3 tactile keypad custom designed, but is pin compatible with the common ones
  • 1 × Dream SAM2695 module custom design

View all 15 components

  • Alternative Pico

    tinashe2 days ago 0 comments

    I've been busy designing a more compact and self contained PCB for the project and that is coming along pretty well and is virtually complete. In the meantime I happened upon a Pico with a screen i.e :

    This could be an interesting device to use as a base, it's already got a screen and a charger. That would drastically reduce parts count. The screen is rather small though, but for now it would be a great proof of concept.

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