video link : https://youtu.be/fczLNwFR3is

Overview

The video is a very quick overview of different platforms, and to keep it from being overly long, Im quite brief and do make some generalisation, aimed to not overwhelm beginners with lots of details. The idea is to then go through each platform in later episodes where I will talk a little more in detail about each.

Microcontrollers (MCU)

Teensy

https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/ Wide choice available, for my projects I like the Teensy 3.x series, as low power consumption. The Teensy 4 is much more powerful, but uses quite a few more mA !

Arduino

https://www.arduino.cc/ In the video I show the smaller Arduinos, like the nano, but there are much bigger boards.

Audio boards

Axoloti

https://axoloti.com based on STM32F4

Single board computers

Raspberry PI. (aka rPI)

https://www.raspberrypi.org/

lots of models, the latest is the rPI4, very powerful... but requires quite a bit of power, in a confined space it may start to overheat without active cooling. the rPI3B+ is a nice alternative, still powerful - but uses a bit less power, and not so likely to overheat.

audio 'hats' HifiBerry : https://www.hifiberry.com/

PiSound : https://blokas.io/

Bela

https://bela.io/ Bela are also doing a great videos series that I'd highly recommend! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVLRUyPBBJk&list=PLCrgFeG6pwQmdbB6l3ehC8oBBZbatVoz3

Alternatives

There are a lot of rPI 'clones' and alternatives e.g. BananaPI, Tinkerboard

Programmable Music Instruments

not a good name for a category, as its so broad... but its how I think about them. (Some call them 'music computers' but that didn't feel right either - to me at least)

Monome Norns

https://monome.org/docs/norns/ also search for Fates on Lines https://llllllll.co/

finally Monome now do a DIY norns shield.

Organelle

Critter and Guitari Organelle https://www.critterandguitari.com/organelle

note: all of the above have very active communities and forums. these are a great place to learn more, and also to ask questions both before buying and afterwards. probably THE best thing about DIY is the communities, in my experience, they are full of experienced people that love to help.

More Alternatives...

There are many new platforms arriving all the time, some that I didn't mention

Daisy - https://www.electro-smith.com/daisy Audio Board, so MCU + audio hardware comes in a few formats - though the target is the basic board. more powerful than Axoloti, since this is based on the ARM M6

Elk Audio - https://elk.audio/ Single Board Computer - rPI Hat (like PiSound/HiFiBerry)

STMF32 discovery boards - https://www.st.com/en/evaluation-tools/32f746gdiscovery.html aimed at the development market - so not alot of support for 'end users' - come with screen.