split the article in at least two different ones. This one should stay about Orca Pi, not a take about DAWs. Let’s link here to the take about DAWs.

A couple of years ago, I became very skeptical about using DAWs for music. They are usually powerful toolkits, but way too complex. It can turn out to situations where you spend all your time fixing computers and not making music. They are exactly the opposite of the Unix philosophy that encourage small modular tools that do one thing well. I usually use Linux based computers. Although Ubuntu Studio is a relativelly satisfactory Linux distribution providing an interesting ready-to-use setup, I dislike the idea of having a big box that does so many things through the computer. This is why I started this project of a SBC running only one application, Orca, a sequencer equipped of an esoteric programming language.

After 15 years using softwares and virtual instruments, started around 2001 with extended experiences on ProTools and GRM tools on the Mac, followed by the usage of Ardour and the many free software scene products (I am a big fan of Yoshimi synthesizer and Calf plugins), I decided to switch to hardware instruments again. Including classical guitar. Including a good old analogic synthesizer, because why not. Those can be expensive but this is a radical change on how to produce music. At this point I use:

• A Moog Grandmother analog semi-modular synth for basses and arpegiated notes, as well as all kind of free, improvized expressions
• An Elektron Model:Cycles as a drum box

I could have use Eurorack modules, but refuse to enter this trend as they are ridiculously expensive, although corresponding to what I described as “Unix philosophy” right before.

I really miss a good sequencer. Interesting solutions like the ones provided by Elektron or Polyend are attractive but definitely looks like a luxury for amateurs. So I decided to build my own device from a software I experimented a bit with in the past. I believe this software, is one of the most fascinating and practical way to generate music today. It's called Orca, has been developped by Hundred Rabbits allow to pilot hardware devices through midi, and very importantly, it's files are text based and can be read, shared, wrote, only with a text editor.

So the idea is to put Orca on a tiny (8 cms) and cheap (< 70 €) computer, and make it possible to integrate in a home studio configuration without having to feel like you are sit at the computer

What decided gave me the motivation to try this was the reading of a similar experiment by Alexander Mitzkus.

The basis for the device is an Orange Pi 3 LTS running Armbian (a Debian / Ubuntu based Linux distribution for ARM SBC). Orange Pi devices are extremelly cheap compared to other brands, although their performance are sufficiently good. If you can afford a Raspberry Pi, I recommend to use those, as the Orange Pi have a couple of limitations, mostly the availability of builds and card support.

It is recommended to be careful with power adapters and SD cards. I recommend buying 2 SD cards so that you can experiment with different Linux distros. Armbian support 32Gb SD cards at the maximum and those are quite cheap (less than 10 euros).

Select you Armbian distribution of choice for this ARM64 architecture board. I chooses the Ubuntu Jammy one coming with the XFCE desktop. It is very stable and powerful. Just don’t try, at the date I write those words, to use the WiFi. I also tried à Debian build and various Manjaro for ARM64 chips but wasn’t convinced.

Burning Armbian on the card is quite simple. Download the image for your specific device on the SD card and boot. The installation process immediately start and is straight forward.

explain how to overcome the ARM64 specifics with Electron

I modified the official Orca distribution to for ARM64. I still have issues with the Chromium sandbox but the application can be used normally. I also configured Orca to be launched at startup and occupy the whole screen. I modified it to use some of the readline keybindings.

Finally, the real hardware part: the SBC has been plugged to a 800 x 400 screen and the thing mounted on a lamp stand. It feels great to have this tiny screen close to the eyes and not laying on the table in a mess of cables. I don’t have an Eurorack setup so it cannot be embedded elsewhere.

tell about each construction part, difficulties and solutions