Robin Davies is seeking sponsorship for the PiPedal and ToobAmp projects. He is a software developer from Ottawa, Canada, with 40 years of professional software development and management experience, and -- in a second, more recent life -- a professional jazz musician.

The PiPedal project turns a Raspberry Pi 4 device into a high quality guitar multi-effects pedal. PiPedal is controlled using a Wi-Fi-connected phone or tablet, or desktop computer. Musicians are increasingly clipping phones or tables onto microphone stands while performing on stage; so controlling PiPedal via a small-form-factor touch device has been a high development priority.

The ToobAmp project started as a labor of love: a guitarist pursuing great guitar tone (which is a curse and a blessing that all guitarists fall into). As it progressed, it became more and more apparent how much of an opportunity fast cheap ARM processors provided, and ubiquitous phone and tablet displays provide.

The Raspberry Pi 4 platform provides a unique opportunity for developers of guitar pedals. The Raspberry Pi 4 provides a powerful processor, and stable low-latency audio at a fraction of the price of commercial guitar pedals.
The $70 Raspberry Pi 4 processor provides more power than commercial guitar effects pedals costing a thousand dollars more. And recent improvements to the Linux kernel (in 5.10) have stabilised Linux's support of professional-quality USB audio devices so that pretty much any USB audio device will work out of the box (device support in previous versions of Linux was ad-hoc and inconsistent for newer USB 2.0 audio devices).

I was so pleased with the initial results I was getting from the ToobAmp plugins, that the next step was to figure out how to use them in live performance. Although there are currently solutions for remote control of guitar pedals via web interfaces, none of them really supported touch interfaces or small form-factor phone and tablet displays. Guitarists (jazz guitarists particularly) are constantly working to increase the portability of their guitar rigs;.so the prospect of adding a laptop my onstage rig just was not an appealing idea. And thus, the PiPedal project was born.

The web interface used to control PiPedal has been meticulously designed from the ground up, to professional development standards in order to work well on a wide variety of screen sizes, including common phone, tablet and desktop screen sizes. The user interface reactively adjusts to accommodate available screen space, while still providing full functionality on all devices from the smallest to the larges screens. PiPedal also makes reactive accommodations for touch- and mouse-driven input.

PiPedal and ToobAmp are both currently usable for live performance. But work remains in order to improve packaging. Short term plans include getting the project adopted into Debian software distribution repositories, in order to allow easy installation. Longer term plans include packaging the software to behave more like an Internet of Things appliance, which would significantly improve security. But beyond that, there are a wide range of features that could be pursued depending on available funding.

Sponsorship would allow me to continue aggressive development of the PiPedal and ToobAmp projects.

Your support would be gratefully appreciate.

Robin Davies.