Artemis Synthesizer v2: Digital Audio Synthesizer Kit

The Artemis Synthesizer is a digital audio synthesizer kit developed in my spare time with help from the BU Electronic Design Facility. The kits purpose was to help teach a group of female high school freshmen in the Artemis summer program how to solder. Assembly was designed to take between 2 and 4 hours for a beginner, but should take closer to 30 minutes for someone with prior experience.

The synthesizer utilizes an ATMega328 and a 12-bit DAC to produce the audio, in its default mode you can play 4 different 8 note scales. There is also a sequencer mode and an ability to change the waveform. To load sequences and new waveforms the optoloader interface is used, which uses javascript to blink a black square on a computer screen and a phototransistor to receive this message, which is then decoded on the microcontroller.