🧟 Zombie Groovebox for the M-VAVE FM-1

An alternative firmware: six tracks, 249 presets, a melody and rhythm generator, a drum machine, your own samples and a screen that moves with the music.

Home screen: the zombie headbangs to the beat

Install from the browser · Emulator · Web editor · ZMB sounds

Features


🎛 Sound	5 synth tracks + a drum kit. 8 engines: analog, FM, phase, wavetable, noise, percussion and SAMPLE (your WAVs). Filter, envelope, LFO, drive, delay, reverb, arpeggiator.
🎹 249 presets	14 banks: factory, IDM, ZMB and 11 new ones — chiptune, glitch, ambient, breakcore, acid, FM bells, industrial, sci-fi, generative, lo-fi, basses and leads.
🌀 Motion	Glide, vibrato, 6 LFO shapes onto filter / pitch / FM / amp / pan, FM envelope, drift, crush, humanize, roll, tremolo, random.
🎲 Generator	8 algorithms (motif, Markov, Euclid, random walk, probability, arpeggio, Turing machine, chaos) in 7 styles, in key; mutate, evolve over loops, jam the whole project.
🎼 Sequencer	Up to 64 steps per track, chords, scale and root, edit a held step with the knobs, Euclid and beat generator, 8-step undo.
🥁 Drum machine	16 sounds; chance, velocity and roll on every step; its own loop length for every sound.
⏺ Recording	Count-in and a live overdub loop, step entry.
🔌 MIDI	USB MIDI in and out, MIDI clock out, DAW modes, omni input, TRS → USB.
🌙 Living screen	The zombie moves to the beat, notes fly off as sparks, 4 screensavers, an About screen.

Screen

Home, piano roll and drum grid. These are real firmware frames, captured in the simulator that runs the same C code.

Generator

Hold SEQ and turn PRESET to page 5–6. Knobs: algorithm, style, density, complexity / mutation, octaves, seed, evolve. Black keys:

Gen — a new part for the selected track, in key (scale and root from GLO page 2; with the scale off, the style's own);
Mutate — changes a few steps, keeps the shape;
Seed — a new seed and a new part at once;
Jam — the whole project in the style: tempo, sounds from the style's bank, lead, bass, pad, arpeggio, texture and drums.

EDIT + OCT− undoes any of them. Evolve mutates the part a little every 1–8 loops while the song plays. On the drum track it writes a beat in the style (breakcore: an Amen-style break).

Motion: LFO pages 3–4 and ENV page 3. MIDI: CC5 glide, CC76/77 vibrato, CC0 = 1 before a Program Change reaches presets 129–249.

Screensavers

After a minute untouched the screen turns into Night, Synthwave, Matrix or Bounce, all moving with the music.

On a screensaver, hold HOME for the next one.
Any button wakes the screen and still does its job.
Pick or switch off: GLO → page 5 → K4.

SYSTEM tab

GLO three times quickly opens it:

MIDI: by channel or omni, TRS → USB, program change and CC in;
Sync: clock source and clock out;
Cores: the second core (CPU1);
Panel: key lights and the velocity curve.

Web editor

Everything works from a computer over USB in Chrome or Edge, with nothing to install. Without an FM-1 the editor plays as a synth right in the browser.

Mouse piano roll:

click to place a note;
drag right to set its length;
right-click to delete;
Shift to add a note to the chord.

Your own samples:

Drop a WAV on the page.
Trim it and listen.
Send it to slot USR1–USR4.

Tracks 1–5 play it by note.

Key controls

Action	How
Track / tempo	ALGO / SELECT
Place steps	SEQ, then the 16 white keys
Step count	hold SEQ, turn K1
Edit a step	hold the step, turn K1–K4
Live recording	REC from home: count-in, then a recording loop
Clear the track's pattern	on the SEQ page, hold REC for a second
Undo / redo	EDIT + OCT− / EDIT + OCT+
Save the project	SAVE
About	HOME twice
SYSTEM tab	GLO three times quickly
Language	HOME + GLO

Install

Open the site in Chrome or Edge on a computer.
Connect the FM-1 with a USB data cable.
Click Find FM-1, then Install. Keep the tab open while it writes.

Before installing: save your projects with Export JSON in the editor.

If writing stopped and the FM-1 screen is black: the FM-1 is not broken, it is waiting in loader mode. Reload the page and install again.

The firmware is tested in the emulator, which runs the same C code, and by the automated test suite. Releases are not tried on a physical FM-1 before publishing, so try a new version in the emulator first.

For developers

python -X utf8 source/build-groovebox-180.py                     # firmware .fwsc, simulator, WASM
python -X utf8 tests/run_groovebox_audit.py --build --fuzz 200   # every check + panel fuzzing under ASan/UBSan

Firmware code: source/editions/shared/.
FM-1 platform: source/platform-081/.
Building needs the JieLi toolchain (JIELI_TOOLCHAIN), the AC79 SDK (AC79_SDK) and zig.
Release notes (in Russian): source/GROOVEBOX-*-RU.md.

License

App, DSP, interface and profiles: MIT.
Platform: MPL-2.0.

Details in licenses/THIRD-PARTY.txt.