The project that we highlight this week concerns a subject that we encounter every once in a while: an electronic wind instrument. Based on a PIC32 this device lets you control a music synthesizer over MIDI by blowing in it, just like a flute. Unlike a flute, or any other wind instrument for that matter, this one can also be played without blowing at all. Also the fingering has been simplified because there are no physical constraints on the position of the keys.

For the moment this Rudimentary Electronic Musical Instrument, or REMI as it is called, is not so much an instrument as it is a MIDI controller, but the addition of a full-blown (pun intended) synthesizer is planned. A PWM-controlled filter and amplifier plus audio output to support a single audio channel are already there. The design is completed with an air pressure sensor, touch control, and a 32-bit microcontroller.

P.S. Although today only one prototype exists, REMI has nothing to do with Rémi, the famous book character without family imagined by Hector Malot in 1878.

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