The

Moof Tronic

Mini Synth

New sounds
from a truly tiny
instrument.
By Brian McNamara

Moof Tronic players get the lead out.

I was playing around with a Picaxe microcontroller one day, trying to make a little keyboard. I wanted to build an absolutely minimal hardware frame that I could put together quickly without a circuit board.

The result was the Moof Tronic — a small electronic instrument built on a 24-pin IC socket. To play 8 different notes ( 1 octave in the key of C) against a fast-modulation drone, you touch a stylus to 8 legs of the socket. It also has a small antenna that you can touch to add an effect to the note being played. The 8-pin Picaxe microcontroller that runs the software and generates the sounds sits in one end

of the socket and has a small speaker mounted on top. A programming port allows you to easily debug and test new sound-making programs.

Brian McNamara lives in a small town near Canberra, Australia. By day he works at a university designing and repairing equipment for a biological research facility; by night he designs, hacks, and bends kids’ toys and musical instruments.

Photography by Brian McNamara

70 Make: Volume 15