ZEN-1 (禅) for the M-VAVE FM-1

ZEN-1 is ambient custom firmware for the M-VAVE FM-1. It turns the little synth into a living window: a cherry tree drops petals on a river, koi circle a pond, fireflies blink over a summer stream under a real moon, and every movement you see is a note you hear. Switch it on, set it down, and let it play, soft, slow and never quite the same. When you want to, reach in: the keys play along with the scene, and the knobs shape every part of it.

Sakura at night The koi pond by day Fireflies under a full moon

Try it in the browser (no FM-1 needed): the emulator runs the very code the FM-1 runs, with sound
Install it from Chrome or Edge with the FM-1 on USB, or with tools/fm1_install.py
The guide: every control, knob, mood and scene

The emulator, the installer and the guide are on the project's GitHub Pages site (tools/publish_pages.sh).

Status: 1.0, the first public release. It runs on the FM-1 and installs and uninstalls the way Felucca, X0X, FoMni and FuMi-1 do; the installer can put M-VAVE's own firmware back. Installing custom firmware is at your own risk.

The scenes

Scene	What happens	Moods
Sakura 桜	A pale Somei-Yoshino cherry over a narrow stream, its stone-walled far bank lined with cherries and paper lanterns under layered spring hills, all mirrored in the water; petal rafts drift by. Each petal that lands plays a koto note, pitched by where it lands; gusts shake loose a shower with a harp run; a bush warbler sings; at night the tree is lit and lanterns glow along the far bank	Morning, Afternoon, Golden Hour, Night
Koi 鯉	Koi of the real varieties glide, hover and follow each other in a garden pond (a new shape each picture), and every bite of food is a note (deep in the middle low, near the rim high). Japanese pond frogs, a shishi-odoshi, rain rings, two stone lanterns at night; uneaten food can come back later as a bowl note	Feeding, Still Pond, Rain, Night
Hotaru 蛍	Fireflies over a stream, each blinking on its own clock until the field falls into one shared pulse. A moon from NASA's lunar map takes the path its phase really takes; mist, rain, shooting stars, an owl	Dusk, Festival, Quiet Night, Deep Night

Every scene also has Natural, a whole day or night in half an hour with the music following the light. Every mood remembers your tweaks across power-offs, and can be reset to how it was made.

The music: nothing is a loop. Notes come from what happens on screen, in Japanese pentatonic scales (In, Yo, Min'yo), over a breathing three-voice drone, with a slow ebb and flow, rests, echoes, reverb and recorded nature (brook, breeze, crickets, frogs, owl, bush warbler), all on a 6-operator FM engine (Dexed's msfa).

FuMi-1's ST-50-style koto instrument is kept as a mode: hold HOME.

Controls

ZEN-1 plays by itself. To start, you only need PRESETS (the scene), ALGORITHM (the mood), MASTER (the volume) and PLAY (a new picture). A welcome card shows these the first time it starts.

Control	What it does in a scene
PRESETS	Choose the scene: Sakura, Koi or Hotaru
ALGORITHM	Choose the mood: the time of day and the feel
SELECT	Activity: how busy the scene is (how many petals, koi food or fireflies, and so how many notes)
KNOB 1–4	The four settings on the page that's showing (see below)
FX · SEL	Show the knob pages: FX goes to the next page, SEL to the one before
GLO	Switch between the painted look and pixel art
PLAY	Draw a new picture: a new tree, pond, or field and moon
HOME	Tap: show the battery, scene and mood. Hold: switch to the koto instrument; hold again to come back
SEQ	The sleep timer: each press sets the next time (Off, 15 m, 30 m, 1 h, 2 h, 4 h, 8 h). The picture dims over the last ten minutes, then everything fades out; any button or key wakes it
SAVE	Tap: save right away (changes also save by themselves about 20 s later). Hold 3 s: reset everything
OCT− · OCT+	Move the notes down or up an octave. Both held 5 s: update mode, for installing firmware
Keys	White keys play notes that fit the music, and the scene reacts; black keys do something special in each scene

The knob pages:

Scene: Mood, Activity, Instrument, Space (reverb)
Volume: Notes, Drone (the hum underneath), Air (wind or insects), Water
Nature: two settings of the scene's own, Air Type, Water Type
Music: Echo, Warmth (bright to mellow), Phrases (how notes are chosen), Tide (how much the music slowly swells and fades)

The full list is in the guide (web/site/guide.html).

Building and testing

See BUILDING.md and docs/dev-environment.md.

tests/run_tests.sh                    # host tests, the simulator scenarios, the browser build, the tools
./build.sh                            # build/zen1.fwsc (Docker, JieLi toolchain)
./build.sh --release 1.2         # a release package, build/zen-1-1.2.fwsc
web/emu/build.sh                      # the browser emulator, and the audition bench for developers (Emscripten)
build/host/zen_host SCRIPT OUTDIR    # the whole app on a computer, from a script (tests/scenarios/*.zen)
tools/site_gallery.sh                 # the site's screenshots, from the simulator

The host simulator runs the same app code as the FM-1, writing audio and screenshots, so nearly everything can be developed and tested without the hardware.

Layout

Path	What
`firmware/src/app/`	The app: the scenes (`scene_*.c`), the conductor (the music), the 8-bit renderer, the panel and UI, saved settings
`firmware/src/dsp/`	Sound: FuMi-1's instrument on the FM6 core, the nature beds and recordings, reverb, tuning
`firmware/hal/`, `firmware/loader/`, `firmware/src/*.c`	The platform (Felucca's, via FoMni), kept byte-for-byte; `tools/guard_platform.sh` checks it
`host/`, `web/emu/`	The host simulator and the browser emulator
`web/site/`, `web/zen_installer.html`	The landing page, the guide and the web installer (`tools/make_pages.py`)
`web/bench/`	FuMi-1's audition bench for voicing FM patches (a developer's tool, not on the site)
`tools/`	Build, install, rescue, and the generators for patches, samples, fonts and the moon
`assets/`	Fonts, the CC0 recordings and the NASA moon map, each with its source
`tests/`	Host unit tests and the simulator scenarios

Comments that cite docs/research/ refer to FuMi-1's research notes, in cartesive/fumi-1.

Credits

ZEN-1 is built on FuMi-1 by cartesive, whose instrument it keeps as a mode; on FoMni by Charles Vestal; and on the platform of Felucca by Leo Kuroshita (Hügelton Instruments), by way of X0X. The 6-operator FM core is Felucca's C port of msfa (Dexed, Google and Pascal Gauthier, Apache-2.0). The browser emulator idea comes from Groove OS.

Ideas, not code, came from Charles Vestal's AMB-1 (the breathing drone, rests, loops and the slow arc), Leo Kuroshita's Avonlea (moods), keremimo's Melodee (sending the screen only what changed), ambalek's fall (echoes, motifs, a population of falling things) and Dillbo's KoiBoi2 (food eaten as notes, the pond's memory).

The recordings are CC0, from Freesound (assets/sounds/README.md); Hotaru's moon is from NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio CGI Moon Kit, public domain (assets/images/README.md).

License

GPL-3.0-only; see LICENSING.md. M-VAVE and FM-1 are trademarks of their owners; Suiko and ST-50 are names of Suikohsha. ZEN-1 is independent firmware, not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. It never enables the hardware's Bluetooth or Wi-Fi radio.