Solar upgrades the Nebulophone synthesizer to enhance playability 

Winds of wood and brasss are so nineteenth. We are living in the future and are now synthesizers until the end. There are many to choose from and the Bleep Labs nebulable is an orderly example that was sold from 2012 to 2016, with the design files now available in Github for DIYs. Marcus Dunn liked how the nebulable sounds, but wanted it to be more practical. That is why he developed this “solar” update that drastically improves the playability of the nebulable.

The main interface of the nebulable is a pencil keyboard integrated directly on the PCB. That was a design option that saved a lot of money and has a lot of character, similar to the iconic stylophone, but an optical pencil is a bit difficult to handle during the actions that include several pieces of equipment.

Dunn’s solar update adds a touch keyboard and re -package everything so you can fit in an Eurorack along with other modules. There is also a synchronization to use solar energy with other synthesizers.

The audio circuit is based on the original nebulable, but DUNN completely redesigned the PCB to accommodate the new features. In fact, solar energy has two PCB: one for circuits and one that acts mainly as a coverage plate. It looks very good with the Cherry MX key switches and key lids.

The brain of the operation is an Arduino Nano Board and executes the nebulable sketch, available on the Dunn github page. As Dunn demonstrates in his video, Solar sounds really great and would be a great addition to his Eurorack.