picopico ピコピコ

A very small chiptune synthesizer and player. Sound is made with an 8-bit microcontroller (Attiny85) and
tries to mimic a classical sound chip used in video game consoles from the 80s.

Pretty much inspired by 1-bit symphony by
Tristan Perich and lft/kryo’s project.

Hardware

• AVR ATtiny85
• CR2032 coin cell battery
• 1K resistor
• 0.1uf capacitor
• 3.5mm audio jack
• Push button

Schematic

Note: This schematic is old and inaccurate (although similar). Please see this tutorial as the protoboard picture reflects more accurately the current design.

Software

• Music written in an MML-like language
• HTML5 editor with sound emulator

To do

• Change current parser for a standard MML parser

> AB cdefg4 l8 >cde<c o5 r c

• Implement Square waveform for voice 1 and 2
• Implement Noise waveform for voice 3
• Envelopes!
• Work on MML compiler and editor

License

Schematic and original source code made were taken from a series of blog posts
by David Johnson-Davies.

Schematic image is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0. Source code is
licensed under GPLv3.