Victoria

Victoria is a basic Raspberry Pi audio sampler that can play back audio samples from a USB thumb drive. It is named after the 2015 movie by Sebastian Schipper. I wrote down some notes if you want to build your own. The project started in 2020, and in 2022 I updated it to version 2.

When you click play, data is loaded from Vimeo. Tracking is disabled and no cookies are set. Click here to read the privacy policy of Vimeo

It uses Pimoronis Piano HAT, Drum HAT, pHAT Stack and Adafruits I2S Audio Bonnet (Pimoronis pHAT DAC also works; for direct output to speakers the HiFiBerry MiniAmp is a good option). A Raspberry Pi Zero W was soldered directly onto the pHAT Stack with enough spacing to put the Audio Bonnet on top. Only one micro USB cable is needed to power the sampler, so a power bank can be used to play on the go. One of those mobile phone OTG thumb drives is used (for example the Transcend JetFlash 880 is the perfect size to fit next to the power connector) because it plugs directly into the Pi Zeros micro USB interface, while also providing a USB Type-A connector.

On the USB thumb drive are two directories: drums and piano. The drums folder can hold up to 8 samples which can be played via the Drum HAT, the piano folder can hold hundreds of samples which can be played via the Piano HAT; with the Octave Up / Octave Down buttons one can cycle through the samples in batches of 13.

When holding the Instrument button and pressing either Octave Up or Octave Down one can change the output volume. Holding Instrument and pressing the Drum HAT pad #8 two times will shut down the Pi.

Version 2.0

When you click play, data is loaded from Vimeo. Tracking is disabled and no cookies are set. Click here to read the privacy policy of Vimeo

In 2022, I added a small screen, more buttons and more functionality. The volume can now be controlled via the A and B buttons, which makes it easier to adjust in a live environment. Buttons C, D and E offer the possibility to switch the mode on how sounds are played: C is the default mode, every sound can be started once and then plays until the end. The LEDs on each button is on for the duration of the sound, so you know which sounds are currently playing. D is the toggle mode: each sound loops, and you can stop it by pressing the button again. And finally, E is the chaos mode that works similiar to version 1: each sound starts playing on a button press, but you can press the button multiple times to play many instances of the same sound at the same time.

Other than that, some bugs were fixed and the code cleaned up a bit. The code is written in Python an can be found in my notes.

Here are some more images, from version 1:

Thanks to Simona for the sound samples, the performance in the video of version 1 and some additional photos.