Encouraging custom firmware – on old units!

In the recent months, the landscape has changed so much. Developing software has become much simpler. There are now custom firmwares showing up for synths and controllers everywhere. These are exciting times.

When we look at the GR-1: many units out there in the field. We still regularly release bugfixes for it, but we do not add features. Nowadays that can be totally different. We have added a section “hacking” to the GR-1 support page to help you on your way so that you and your LLM (Claude code, ChatGPT or otherwise) can make the best of it. We are truly keen to see what you can get out of it.

There are many older units in the field, up to 9 years old now, and these are long out of warranty, so if you have one of these units, the world is yours. However (!) if you have a newer unit that’s still within the 2 year factory warranty period, any hacking will void warranty! We do not allow users to open up their units or replace the firmware without our explicit consent. Typically this means you void your warranty on a new unit, so we don’t recommend it. If you know what you’re doing and you don’t care about the warranty, then it’s a different story. If things go wrong and you damage your unit, we will still repair it for the regular hourly rate.

We have documented the protocol that does communication between the Pi and the microcontroller to get you started. The Linux distro on the GR-1 is too old to run an LLM on its prompt, but you can just install a new Raspbian or whatever you like on there, and then install your favorite LLM.

The first GR-MEGA’s now also are out of warranty: they shipped in July 2024, so we also condone custom firmwares on that machine. However, the GR-MEGA still receives regular updates with loads of new quality features. We typically honor 70-80% of the feature requests we get. If enough people chime in, we’re game. So the need for custom firmware is somewhat less of a thing on the MEGA. One exception is accessibility. What about blind or even colorblind people? Democracy will not work for them, since they are only a small percentage of the users. But recently, some people have made custom blind-friendly firmwares for for instance, the Ableton Move. So, why not?

https://www.tastychips.nl/gr-1-support/#hacking is the place to get started. We will follow up with the GR-MEGA, but since there are not many units out of warranty yet, we are not in a hurry.. yet!

We are really curious to see what people can come up with, and we may also incorporate some of their things in our official firmware.