Pocket Integrator
A clever, open hardware add-on board that lets you play your Pocket Operator drum machine like a maraca!
Synchronizing your electronic instruments with live music can be hard. Pocket Integrator makes it easy! It’s an add-on board for Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operator series of hand-held drum machines, that lets you play them like a drum.
Just tap or shake to set the tempo and downbeat of your drum pattern. Keep tapping as long as you like. When you stop, it’ll hold the beat wherever you set it. It’s as easy as clapping your hands! (Really it’s like using your hands to clap another pair of hands that magically keep clapping after you stop clapping them …)
Pocket Integrator sends MIDI Clock signals over MIDI TRS cables or the built-in USB connection. And it sends the same analog sync signal used by Pocket Operators and many other analog synths and rhythm boxes. So you can play not just your Pocket Operator this way, but any other connected synths and drum machines that can follow a digital or analog sync signal. Control all your gear in a new, expressive way! Even if your music is clock-based electronica, the Pocket Integrator makes it easier to set and tweak your tempo during a performance.
Pocket Integrator also contains a fun digital maraca, with nice action and good dynamic range. There are a lot of digital shakers and smartphone percussion apps, but often the time lag between your movement and the sound is too high, which makes these instruments feel awkward. Pocket Integrator connects your movement to sound with a super-tight latency of less than one microsecond. The difference is profound: it just feels and sounds more real, and is way more fun to shake!
Pocket Integrator shares power from its USB port. So once you’ve attached the Pocket Integrator and plugged into USB, your Pocket Operator doesn’t need AAA batteries. If you like to plug a lot of battery-powered instruments together, you’ll appreciate having fewer batteries to change.
Finally, Pocket Integrator implements a USB-based SerialWire interface for programming and debugging the EFM32 Leopard Gecko microcontrollers of Pocket Operators. If you’re an advanced hobbyist with no fear of bare-metal MCU programming, this feature will empower you to explore alternate firmwares for these affordable, great-sounding little drum machines.
The Pocket Integrator presses right onto the back of any Pocket Operator, held on with two industrial-strength elastic bands. It takes just a few seconds to attach, and comes off just as easily. It doesn’t require soldering, or any tools at all. And you can still use the kickstand!
Produced by MSL in Portland, OR.
Sold and shipped by Crowd Supply.
One Pocket Integrator, with everything to attach it to your Pocket Operator.
From the Crowd Supply Basics project.
USB Cable: Type-C to Type-A (2 m, ~6.6 ft)
A 200 cm cable with a USB Type-C and a USB Type-A connector.
