Joy

Overview

Joy is an oscillator for the Daisy patch.Init(), with an OLED added so you can see and select the model and bank. It runs on stock hardware, so the build is the screen, the wiring and the printed panel — no custom PCB to fabricate.

It’s based on Mutable Instruments Braids by Émilie Gillet, and named — like everything here — after the nursery rhyme: one for sorrow, two for joy. Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Mutable Instruments or Electrosmith.

Hardware

Bill of materials: Daisy patch.Init() · 64×48 SSD1306 OLED (I²C) · a few hook-up wires · the printed panel. The OLED shows the current model and bank, so you select by name rather than counting clicks.

The front panel is written in Python (build123d); the same file exports the STL you print.

Calibration, on the module

The oscillator is digital, but its V/oct CV input is analog and needs calibrating.

1. Hold B7 while powering up to enter calibration.
2. The screen reads CALIBRATE 1V — patch a 1 V reference (C1) to V/Oct and press B7.
3. It reads CALIBRATE 3V — patch 3 V (C3, two octaves up) and press B7.
4. DONE. The result is solved, saved to flash and used immediately.

It persists across power cycles, stored alongside your last-used patch. A bad capture — nothing patched, or the wrong voltage — is rejected and the previous calibration kept, so the routine can’t leave the module mistracking. If you never calibrate, sensible measured defaults are used.

Patching tips

Leave GATE unpatched and Joy drones. The internal AD envelope only closes the VCA when something is patched, so with nothing plugged in the oscillator runs continuously — which is what you want when you are auditioning models or using Joy as a drone voice.

CV_8 is an FM input. There is no onboard attenuverter but presumably all racks will have the means to tweak signal depth so the input signal lands at the depth Braids gives it with the it’s attenuverter fully clockwise — about ±30 semitones across ±5V, so roughly 6 semitones per volt. It is deliberately not 1V/oct: this is a depth control, not a second pitch input, so it takes the raw CV rather than the calibrated V/Oct path. Like Braids, it is applied once per render block, so it is control-rate FM.

Joy Lite — screenless variant

Joy Lite is a subset of the Braids models which can be flashed and used on a regular, unmodified Daisy Patch Init. It is the same Braids engine and the same knobs. What changes is how many models you get and how you move between them.

Why sixteen models, and these sixteen

Anyone running a Daisy patch.Init() possibly already owns Plaits. So Joy Lite skips everything Plaits already does well — virtual analog, FM, additive, wavetables, speech, noise, physical models, drums — and ships the sounds that are distinctively Braids instead. Two banks of eight, chosen on the toggle Joy had to sacrifice:

• Bank A — CSAW · Saw-Sync · Ring-Mod · VOSIM · Digi-Filter BP · Chaotic-FM · QPSK · TOY
• Bank B — Square-Sync · Buzz · Saw-Comb · Digi-Filter LP · Digi-Filter HP · Clocked-Noise · Twin-Peaks · ????

Finding your way without a screen

The panel tells you where you are. B8 flips between banks, and each bank remembers the model you left it on. A short press of B7 steps to the next model, wrapping 1 → 8, and the LED blinks the model number back at you. Hold B7 to re-blink the current number if you lose your place.

Joy Lite is flashed exactly like Joy — same SD-card route, so the steps below apply to both. The only difference is which file you copy to the card: use the Download Joy Lite button above to get joy_lite.bin instead of joy.bin.