Silvia Binda | 10-bit PWM

10-bit PWM

2026

DIY Hardware, Critical Interface

10-bit PWM is a custom-built open source ESP32-based PWM programmable synthesizer with analog potentiometer controls and software-defined sound engines. This synthesizer was designed and built as a playful electronic device that could serve as a tool for technological learning and empowerment, accessible to a wide range of diverse audiences.

By building your own 10-bit PWM synth, you can experience the moment of taking control over the technology when creating your own synthesizer step by step: taking the time you need, understanding it, adjusting it, controlling it.

With this project, I also want to demonstrate that technology is not a black box, but has its rules, logic and principles, which, once experienced and understood, can ignite a cascade of ideas, creative practices, insights and further inquiries. Besides rules and logic, designing electronics-based technology intrinsically (though perhaps not evidently) contains an infinite space for experimentation, creativity and learning. All of this is materialized in the 10-bit PWM synth.

Another formative idea behind this project comes from the shared feeling of being fed up with unifrom-style-sleek-looking-black-box-gate-kept-overhyped-marketized-expensive-elitary technologies. Although I admit that most of us (me included) somehow silently accept that 'bigtech' products became integral to our lives and we voluntarily use them in our everyday doing.

But in parallel to the act of consuming these commercial exploitative bigtech gadgets, we are capable of building our own tools, just for fun, without the pressure to be perfect and productive. Without the purpose of making profit. We can just have fun with it and if we want, we can make any use out of it if we feel that it suits our personal needs, not the needs imposed to us by designers of corporate tech giants.

And finally, I wanted to show that building our own devices is much easier that one would probably imagine. That creating such personalized decentralized tool is accessible to everyone, regardless of the level of technological expertise. And that building such a device is a thoroughly creative process from the beginning to the end.

I would like to encourage everyone to engage with technology and to experience the process of building your own technology from scratch, as there always are important insights embedded in the process, sometimes even surprising results coming out of this practice.

Acknowledgements

This project was developed at BEK's Electronic Lab and was co-financed by the European Union.

Technical specifications

Platform: ESP32

Programming Environment: MicroPython

Audio Output: 3.5 mm stereo jack

Channel Configuration: Dual mono (L = R)

Controls: Analog potentiometers, Push buttons

External DAC: not required

Synthesis: PWM pulse wave / square wave

PWM resolution: 10-bit (0 - 1023 duty control)

Control resolution: 8-bit parameter mapping (0 - 255)