Maker Faire Bay Area 2023

Blipblox by Playtime Engineering

Home: California, United States

Our Maker Story Playtime Engineering is Troy and Kate Sheets. We design and manufacture advanced electronic music toys designed for all ages. Our flagship product is the Blipblox synthesizer. The making of the Blipblox is a great example of taking your “maker” ideas and turning them into a real product and a successful business. It all started when Troy started tinkering with ways to produce synthesized sound from low cost computer chips. Using a Microchip microcontroller development board, Troy wrote the code to make a single sawtooth sound wave. From that early code grew the software that would power the Blipblox. On the hardware side, Troy wired in knobs (the board already had buttons) and the controls started to take shape. The next step was to design a PCB board that included LEDs, MIDI, buttons, knobs, and an audio amplifier. 3D printing was used to experiment with various product designs. After several years of hard work, we are extremely happy with the final product. Today, the Blipblox remains one of the only synthesizers on the market fully certified to international child safety standards for ages 3 and up. We are grateful to the Maker Community for all of the inspiration along the way. Maker Faire Exhibit Description Join Playtime Engineering at the Blipblox Sound Lab! Our Sound Lab is fun for kids (and adults) of all ages. You’ll get hands-on experience making music using Blipblox synthesizers and the all new myTRACKS music creation station.