Someone with a microcontroller could run Tulip without a screen to do music stuff in Python

[bwhitman]

We've had some chat about a "headless" Tulip: #287 #115

And working with people trying AMY on Arduino on the discord, i'm realizing how complex it is to do things like have a MIDI input control AMY in C, especially patches, voices, parameters. And we've already done a lot of work in Tulip covering up that complexity in Python, with our midi.py / voices.py etc polyphonic / multimbral Synth units.

So why not start building a version of Tulip without the display core, and somehow run-time addressable pins for I2S, I2C, MIDI? And the board boots into a UART with a Python REPL, just plain Micropython, but with the Tulip modules baked in and AMY running. That way, people could even port their Tulip creations to a headless synth, even an Alles board. Or a RP2040, or a RP2350, or a Teensy, or a Daisy, or etc etc.

This is in research stage, we'll have to figure out a lot to get this really going, but I'd love any feedback others have on this idea, and especially boards you'd like to be supported.

[znmeb]

Boards:

• Raspberry Pi Pico for sure, including the new RP2350 boards. Anything with an RP2040 should work.
• ESP32-S3 and ESP32-C6
• Rebel Technology OWL 2 and 3
• Electro-Smith Daisy
• Teensy 4.1

There are quite a few Eurorack modules with a USB port, a micro-controller and knobs / faders / analog I/O, etc. Allen Synthesis EuroPi, Electro-Smith Daisy Patch and patch.init(), Befaco Lich. Rebel Technology OWL 2 and OWL 3 devices exist in desktop, Eurorack and "stompbox" hardware configurations.

Connectivity options:

• USB MIDI and audio
• TRS MIDI
• Analog audio and control voltage
• USB and UART serial

I have the Electo-Smith Daisy Pod, Daisy Patch and patch.init, Befraco Lich (uses OWL 2), and Allen Synthesis EuroPi.