Question

What is the experience running programs written in an audio synthesis/analysis language such as ChucK, Pure Data, Csound, Supercollider, etc. in an embedded device such as an Arduino Mega, Beagle Board or a custom board with a microprocessor or DSP chip?

I would like to know which language and hardware you chose and why. What were the obstacles, etc.? My objective is to run programs that can be easily programmed by musicians/producers in a board that is not too expensive.

I received input from someone who is successfully running ChucK programs in a Beagle Board (Ubuntu Linux on a Beagle Board running ChucK), but his choice of language and hardware was made very lightly, his setup is not using the DSP in the Beagle Board and it seems like overkill to run a whole Linux install to process audio signals.

Any input is appreciated!

Update: I found Zengarden which is a Pd runtime implementation (as a standalone C++ library) and runs well on ARM based devices. For now, I’ll go with the BeagleBoard and Zengarden but in a later stage of the project, I’ll need to replace the BeagleBoard with something that costs less.

I’d love to hear more input from the community.

Answer 1

Thanks everyone for your comments and answers. For everybody else’s reference, I ended up writing a JACK client in C++ that parses and interprets PureData patches and ran it on a BeagleBoard with Angstrom Linux and JACK server. Here’s a video and a tutorial that I wrote: http://elsoftwarehamuerto.org/articulos/691/puredata-beagleboard/