If you grew up in the 80s or 90s, you certainly remember the distinct sound that video games of the time made. While you could listen to recordings of this type of music on YouTube, if you’d like to make your own, then this expansion board from EasyLab4Kids will fill that role quite nicely.
As of now, drivers are available to let this board work with Arduino, though creator Den Haag is currently working on Support for the Raspberry Pi and BBC Microbit. If you don’t want to wait and are willing to experiment, it communicates via I2C, so it should be possible to use it with most any hobby dev board or single-board computer.
As shown in the video below, it plays nicely with the Arduino Nano, and also makes a nice output for a compact oscilloscope. Besides letting you create your own sound effects, it can also play MML (Music Macro Language) songs, letting you jam out to whatever your favorite classic gaming tunes—without the intermittent sounds of laser beams, hand-to-hand combat, or the audio equivalent of falling in a hole!
For more info on digital audio concepts, why not check out this synthesizer fundamentals post from Chris D?
