What?

Spires is a scale synth using time of flight sensors to drive one or more digital oscillators. The processor used is an arduino nano compatible LGTBF328P. Spires uses a time of flight laser to measure the distance to your hand. It plays all manner of scales at the wave of a hand. And it outputs midi so you can rock out on your other gear.

Volume can be controlled with the light sensitive LDR (top left). This allows tremello/vibrato effects. And it can be turned off, too :)

Banks and programs are changed with the button encoder (top right). Feedback from the LED.

Spires was made to be portable. It has a 4AA battery holder as a base. It can also be powered by USB-C. And programmed! It's all open source.

The default program reproduces the western modes. Holding the encoder button depressed and turning chooses a mode, in the traditional order Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolodian, Aeolian, Locrian. Pressing the encoder button in this program changes the root, from C to B. So you can play all the modes in any key. The other banks: 1. ragas 2. various historical europeans 3. some more exotics (geographical as well as cultural) 4. pentatonics from diverse cultures 5. hexatonics

So well over 120 different kinds of scales to play with ;) As I add them, the firmware can be updated. The update can be done in a web browser and requires no programming knowledge or extra software (chrome only, any OS).

For example audio / video, please have a look at the website. If you want to DIY, have a look at the design files and gerbers at github.

Why did you make it?

Well, I wanted a small portable means to riff on scales while playing other gear at the same time.

What makes it special?

There is at least one device that's similar, but none that are as small and simple :)