So in my exploration of the new Teensy 3.5 and 3.6 boards, one of the features that stood out to me most of all was the addition of a second USB port. This is big news because traditionally with Arduino compatible boards, there is a single USB port of the chip, sometimes not even that (UART-USB conversion). This isn't a physical USB plug, but the port peripherals on the chip which are designed to be configured and connect to a physical USB socket. Now, why does this excite me? The reason is simple.
The combination of the 180MHz clock speed and raw power of the Teensy 3.6 makes it the perfect device to create a powerful, polyphonic synthesiser. Yes, I know that this is nothing new and people have done this with previous gen Teensy boards, but normally the only control method is knobs and dials. But the new 3.6 with the 2nd USB port means that it could be configured to work in host mode to connect up external USB MIDI devices such as keyboards and controllers. Sure keyboards with DIN-5 MIDI jacks can be used easily via a UART port, but many keyboards now are exclusively USB.
Paul Stoffregen hasn't created libraries to support this extra USB port yet so it could be months off, but with the maker community being the curious beast that it is, hopefully, next year will be the start of many fancy projects!
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