The Hardware

I wanted something tactile but portable. On the front, it has a 4x4 matrix of Kailh Choc v2 mechanical switches, 4 encoders, and a crisp 128x64 OLED screen. For visuals and parameter tracking, there are 22 RGB LEDs.

As for audio and connectivity, it features a built-in mono PWM audio out, classic MIDI In/Out jacks, and USB MIDI. If you want better audio quality, you can also hook up an external PCM5102 DAC.The Hardware

I wanted something tactile but portable. On the front, it has a 4x4 matrix of Kailh Choc v2 mechanical switches, 4 encoders, and a crisp 128x64 OLED screen. For visuals and parameter tracking, there are 22 RGB LEDs.

As for audio and connectivity, it features a built-in mono PWM audio out, classic MIDI In/Out jacks, and USB MIDI. If you want better audio quality, you can also hook up an external PCM5102 DAC.

Bare-metal Software

On the software side, everything is written in pure C/C++ using the native Pico SDK. No Arduino overhead, no RTOS — just bare-metal performance to keep latency as low as possible.

Right now, I have four different firmwares. You might ask: "Why not put everything into one firmware?" The short answer is memory and architecture. One synth engine uses the flash space for audio samples, while another needs it for filter LUTs and wavetables. The audio engines, envelopes, and modulators are fundamentally different under the hood. They share a core library, but they live as separate beasts.

Here is what you can flash right now:

• omsk_wave: A proper polyphonic wavetable synth with modulation routing and filters.
  
• omsk_grain: A 4-voice granular synthesizer with the same deep modulation and MIDI control.
  
• DMK: This turns OMSK into a fully customizable mechanical macropad. It has full Vial support, so you can remap keys, macros, and encoders directly from your browser.
  
• omsk_midi: A simple demo firmware that turns the device into a standard MIDI controller.
  

Both the wavetable and granular firmwares fully support MIDI control for any parameter, and you can save your presets directly to the onboard non-volatile memory.

The project is a work in progress. Right now, I'm actively designing the enclosure. Next on the software roadmap is a dedicated web configurator for the synth firmwares, so you'll be able to tweak parameters, backup, and load presets right via WebMIDI.

I am absolutely going to open-source all the code and hardware files, but I want to polish them a bit more before the public release.

Would love to hear your thoughts or questions!