Some of the most interesting expressive instruments begin life on a maker's bench. In October 2026, Daisy Audio introduced three open hardware dev kits built around its Seed3 board, aimed at people who want to build their own synths, modules and pedals. Synth Anatomy reported the launch on October 12.
For the MPE community, the appeal is simple: custom hardware is where new ideas about touch, pressure and gesture get tested.
What is in the lineup
The three kits are Desktop, Eurorack and Pedal, and all of them use the Seed3 board. According to the report, the board has an ARM Cortex-M7 microcontroller running at 480 MHz, with 65 MB of RAM and 8 MB of flash.
Prices, including VAT and shipping from the Netherlands, are:
- Desktop: 400.14 euros
- Eurorack: 342.81 euros
- Pedal: 228.16 euros
The Desktop kit offers 5-pin DIN MIDI in and out. The Eurorack version provides MIDI in and out through mini sockets. The report does not mention MIDI for the Pedal kit.
What about MPE?
The announcement does not mention MPE, so we will be clear: these kits are general-purpose platforms, not MPE products. But they show how builders could approach expressive MIDI.
MPE is carried over ordinary MIDI messages. Each note gets its own channel, so pitch bend, channel pressure and CC 74 apply to a single note. A custom instrument that reads standard MIDI can, in principle, be programmed to respond to those messages. The practical limits depend on the firmware you write or adopt:
- Channel handling. Your code needs to track which channel each note arrives on and keep per-note state.
- Voice count. Per-note modulation costs processing power. A 480 MHz processor gives some headroom, but it is a budget you must manage.
- Connection type. 5-pin DIN MIDI runs at a fixed speed, so dense streams of pressure and bend data can become a bottleneck. Our guide on MPE and MIDI bandwidth explains the details.
Why open hardware helps expressive music
Community projects have a strong record in this space. Open firmware and open designs let players adapt instruments to their own playing style, which is exactly what expressive musicians tend to want. When a platform is open, anyone can add a mapping for pressure to filter cutoff, or build a patch where slide controls the position of a resonator.
The Seed3 kits lower the barrier for makers who are comfortable with code but do not want to design a circuit board from scratch. For anyone dreaming of a personal instrument, that is a welcome starting point.
Where to learn more
Full details, ordering information and documentation are on the Daisy Audio website. If you build something that responds to MPE messages, the community would love to hear about it.