The idea to use CircuitPython for the firmware is rather unusual.
However, I’d be even more interested to know how they find enough customers for something that niche to stay afloat, especially in the current economic situation.
Yes, there is a pretty good sized market for Eurorack synth modules. It’s been a very, very trendy thing in the synth world for the last 5-10 years, despite the high prices.
While I don’t know about synth sales, I know that guitar sales have gone through the roof since the pandemic started. Fender had its best year ever in 2020 IIRC. Lots of people (including me) playing and making music at home.
I’m not an marketing expert but I can definitely imagine social media provides enough customers. Pretty photos travel well online: https://winterbloom.com/
That said, this post makes no mention of marketing, although it is good marketing in itself. Being at the top of Hacker News (where I first saw it) gives tens of thousands of real readers, and that’s worth something.
And being in a niche can be better than having a lot of competitors!
To me it feels like the people who think embedded systems like industrial equipment, cars, or airplanes use a lot of type systems and formal methods because they need to be reliable. (There were more than a few of these posts on lobste.rs). Haha, if only they knew …
(Of course I think the state of the art needs to be improved, but languages are a small part of the reason why deployed systems are reliable or unreliable. Dependencies are probably a bigger deal, and embedded C programs tend to have few dependencies.)
The idea to use CircuitPython for the firmware is rather unusual.
However, I’d be even more interested to know how they find enough customers for something that niche to stay afloat, especially in the current economic situation.
Yes, there is a pretty good sized market for Eurorack synth modules. It’s been a very, very trendy thing in the synth world for the last 5-10 years, despite the high prices.
While I don’t know about synth sales, I know that guitar sales have gone through the roof since the pandemic started. Fender had its best year ever in 2020 IIRC. Lots of people (including me) playing and making music at home.
I’m not an marketing expert but I can definitely imagine social media provides enough customers. Pretty photos travel well online: https://winterbloom.com/
That said, this post makes no mention of marketing, although it is good marketing in itself. Being at the top of Hacker News (where I first saw it) gives tens of thousands of real readers, and that’s worth something.
And being in a niche can be better than having a lot of competitors!
It’s a good niche. A small community of really dedicated tinkerers who have long ago realised this is where their money is going.
If anyone “gasps” at the fact that someone would use C to program microcontrollers they shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near microcontrollers.
To me it feels like the people who think embedded systems like industrial equipment, cars, or airplanes use a lot of type systems and formal methods because they need to be reliable. (There were more than a few of these posts on lobste.rs). Haha, if only they knew …
(Of course I think the state of the art needs to be improved, but languages are a small part of the reason why deployed systems are reliable or unreliable. Dependencies are probably a bigger deal, and embedded C programs tend to have few dependencies.)
As someone who works on this for a living: can confirm, it’s not nearly as strict/well put together as people would think/want haha.