NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 14, 2022

Contact: Robin Davies
+1-(613) 421-2622
rerdavies@gmail.com

Product Launch: PiPedal Guitar Effects for Raspberry Pi 4

Ottawa, Canada — Robin Davies is pleased to announce the public launch of the open-source PiPedal Guitar Effects Pedal for Raspberry Pi 4.

PiPedal allows guitarists to use a cheap Raspberry Pi 4 as a guitar effects pedal. PiPedal provides a touch-friendly web interface over a Wi-Fi hotspot, that allows remote configuration and control of PiPedal guitar effect chains using a connected phone or tablet. This allows guitarists to clip a phone or tablet onto a microphone stand in order to control PiPedal during live performance.

PiPedal includes a basic set of guitar effects from the ToobAmp LV2 plugin collection. But users can easily install other LV2 guitar plugins for use with PiPedal.

The lead developer for the project is Robin Davies – a professional software developer with over 40 years of experience in a previous life, and a professional jazz guitarist in a second life.

   “The PiPedal project started as a quest for better guitar tone – a disease that all guitarists suffer from”, said Robin. “And it’s a particular dire disease if you are also a software developer.”

   “The Raspberry Pi 4 attracted my attention. It’s a fast cheap processor with lots of memory that provides more processing power than commercial guitar effect pedals that cost seven- or eight-times more. It also provides stable, low-latency audio, and most importantly, an open platform for developing audio effects. So building a great guitar effects processor became a pandemic project. I experimented with my Raspberry Pi 4, and soon managed to cook up guitar effects that produced better tone that I was getting with commercial guitar effects pedals. The next practical problem was how to use a Raspberry Pi 4 in live performance.

   “Although there are existing guitar pedal frameworks for Raspberry Pi, few of them allow remote control, and those that do provide an interface that doesn’t work well with touch devices or the compact displays of phones and tablets. As a professional guitar player, I’m always looking at ways to make my guitar rig smaller and more portable. The prospect of adding a laptop to my guitar rig was far from appealing. So I designed a web interface for PiPedal that worked well on phone displays.

   “Initially, the project was intended for personal use; but as I got further in, it became more and more compelling, and more and more apparent that I needed to share what I was doing. And so PiPedal came into the world.”

Robin Davies is currently seeking sponsors for the PiPedal project in order to allow continued open-source development of the project.

Links:

Robin Davies is a professional software developer with over 40 years of experience developing and managing commercial software projects. He now works as a professional jazz guitarist in Ottawa, Canada.

–30–