It is a lovely day in the studio and you have captured a horrible goose and put it into your synthesizer. Big Honking Button is, well, a big button that honks. Okay- okay, before you run away- it’s actually a simple sampler in a very silly package! It has pitch CV, gate in, gate out, and you can store up to 8MB of samples on it.
Out of the box, Big Honking Button will give you a nice “HONK!” every time you press that delicious button. However, the fun doesn’t stop there. You can easily connect this module to your computer with a standard USB cable (the USB port is on the bottom of the module) and it’ll show up as a teeny tiny external drive. You can then put your own samples onto it and even customize its behaviour. This kit is very beginner friendly, requiring you to solder only 7 through-hole components. All surface mount components are already soldered and it’s already programmed. It can be put together in about 2 hours.
Big Honking Button – Build Guide | User Guide
What else can Big Honking Button do?
Glad you asked! Because it runs CircuitPython you can customize quite a lot about it – you could turn it into a random gate generator, for example. You can load multiple samples and have the CV in select between samples, or just play a random sample. There’s lots of possibilities here & there’s several examples in the user guide.
Customization is super easy thanks to the way CircuitPython works. You just connect a standard USB cable to your computer and to the USB port on the bottom of the module and it’ll show up as a small external drive. From there, you can edit code.py and change how it works as well as load up new samples. It’s basically a little computer that has a gate in, a gate out, a -5 to +5v ADC input, and a -10 to +10 audio output with 10 bits of resolution.
Specs:
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Audio out
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Gate in (the sample is triggered by the button or gate in)
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Gate out (comes from the button or gate in)
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Pitch CV in (-5v to +5v)
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8MB flash storage for code & samples
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Reversible panel so you can put the button at the bottom if you need to
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Power Consumption: +12v 25mA, -12v 5mA
- Width: 8Hp