We absolutely adore inspired labor-of-love tales such as this one. [Alastair] wanted to build a synth for his daughter’s third birthday in spite of having no prior hardware knowledge. It became the perfect excuse to learn about CAD, microcontrollers, PCB design, and of course, 3D printing.

So, why a synth for a toddler? Aside from plain old ‘why not?’, the story goes that she received a Montessori busy-type board which she seemed to enjoy, and it reminded [Alastair] of the control surface of a synth. He wondered how hard it could be to build something similar that made sound and didn’t require constant button presses.

[Alastair] began his journey by dusting off a 15-year-old Arduino Inventors Kit. The initial goal was to get potentiometer readings and map them to 12 discrete values, and then emit MIDI messages. This was easy enough, and it was time to move to a synth module and an Elegoo Nano.

The full adventure is definitely worth the read. Be sure to check out the pink version in action after the break. You really don’t wanna miss the lil’ panda bear. Trust us.

Thanks for the tip, [dole]!