Description

I play bass in a band and we often needed a simple way to trigger sound samples live — intros, spoken clips and effects. Most solutions required a laptop or complex gear, so I decided to build a dedicated hardware sample player.

The result is Samplotron, a small standalone sampler based on ESP32.

It plays samples from an SD card and can be triggered via MIDI notes, making it easy to control from pads, keyboards or drum triggers during live performance.

Features:

• ESP32 audio engine
• MIDI sample triggering
• polyphonic playback
• SD card sample storage
• fully open source hardware and firmware

The project started as a practical tool for my band, but I decided to release it as open source so other musicians and DIY builders can use or improve it.

GitHub:
https://github.com/jakubthedeveloper/Samplotron