// the find
shorepine/tulipcc
The Tulip Creative Computer and AMYboard - portable Python synthesizers
Tulip CC is an ESP32-S3-based open-source computer that boots into MicroPython, with a 120-voice AMY synthesizer, touchscreen display, and MIDI I/O built in. AMYboard is the headless modular-synth sibling with audio I/O, CV jacks, and S/PDIF. This is for musicians and hardware hackers who want a dedicated, distraction-free coding environment for live sound and graphics work — not general-purpose computing.
The AMY synthesizer engine is genuinely impressive: FM, additive, Karplus-Strong, PCM, analog-style filters, and a 120-oscillator polyphony budget all running locally on an ESP32-S3 is real engineering work, not just wrapping a library. The web emulator runs the same MicroPython stack as the hardware, so you can develop and share patches without owning the device — that's a smart way to lower the barrier. Hardware PCB schematics and gerbers are fully public through multiple revisions, and the BOM is available, so you can actually build one from scratch. The $59 price point for a complete system with display, MIDI, WiFi, and real synthesis is hard to argue with.
2MB of usable MicroPython RAM is tight — you will hit that ceiling the moment you try to load a non-trivial sample library or do anything memory-intensive in Python, and there's no upgrade path on the hardware. The 256-color 8-bit palette (RGB332) is a deliberate retro choice but it will feel like a constraint rather than an aesthetic for anyone doing serious graphics work. The project has two product lines (Tulip CC and AMYboard), a desktop app, a web version, and multiple hardware revisions — the documentation is spread across all of them and getting a clear picture of which features exist where requires reading several files. Windows support for Tulip Desktop is WSL-only, which is a real friction point for the audience most likely to be interested in this.