Wakes is a semimodular synthesizer, built as a custom firmware for the SP-1, an unreleased Teenage Engineering stem player that was turned into a dev board by its community.

Wakes combines two Mutable Instruments modules:

• Plaits: A macro-synthesizer voice, featuring multiple sound engines
• Marbles: A playful random sequencer

The development of Wakes is unaffiliated with Teenage Engineering or Mutable Instruments. IMPORTANT: Flash custom firmware on the SP-1 at your own risk. SP-1s are abandonware, they do not have manufacturer support. There is no way to go back to the base firmware once you've flashed it away.

📖 Manual

Wakes – Manual (PDF): The manual details the layout of each page, with every control and how how to use them, in an aesthetically pleasing and readable format. Once you've installed Wakes on your SP-1 using the Flashing section below, start here.

Status

v0.8.0, pre-release for beta testing. Report problems with the bug form under Issues.

Flashing

1. Wakes features new storage protocols for the SP-1. If you've never used Wakes before, you need to format your storage partition. To do that, Download the latest Fresh bin wakes-sp1-fresh.bin.
2. If you've used Wakes before, and want to avoid touching your storage, Download the latest regular bin wakes-sp1.bin.
3. Older Wakes versions and release notes are available through the repo's releases page.
4. Open https://solderless.engineering. Hold down T1+T4. Keep them held while connecting the SP-1 over USB-C.
5. Follow solderless.engineering's instructions on how to connect to your SP-1 to flash it.
6. Select the .bin in Solderless Engineering's "firmware utility" page, flash it, and once done, you can unplug.
7. The first time you turn Wakes ON after flashing a fresh bin, it will perform a short format of the eMMC card. Give it a moment.

The T1+T4 recovery trigger in step 4 lives in Teenage Engineering's bootloader, not in Wakes, so it works with whatever firmware is installed. Wakes never writes below the flash memory's 0x20000 (and neither should your CFW's), because that's where the bootloader lives.

Building

Zephyr v4.3.1 and Zephyr SDK 0.17.4, both pinned. The workspace path must not contain spaces, and the clone must be named wakes-sp1.

mkdir sp1-ws && cd sp1-ws
git clone https://github.com/Worldwave/Wakes wakes-sp1
west init -l wakes-sp1 && west update
cd zephyr && git apply ../wakes-sp1/zephyr-patches/nordic-cmsis-system-core-clock.patch && cd ..
pip install -r zephyr/scripts/requirements.txt
west build -p always -b stem_player wakes-sp1/firmware -- -DBOARD_ROOT="$PWD/wakes-sp1"

Output: build/zephyr/wakes-sp1.bin. The Zephyr patch is required and is lost on every west update. Windows setup and troubleshooting: docs/BUILD.md.

Reference

docs/UI-PAGES.md	every control on every page, in detail
config/engines.csv	which engine sits in each of the 24 slots (editable)
docs/PLAITS-ENGINES.md	every engine, its faders and its CPU cost
docs/MARBLES-SETTINGS.md	Marbles models, ranges and scales
docs/DEFAULTS.md	every default, and what a reset restores
docs/MIDI.md	MIDI over USB: what it does, and how to change it
config/midi.ini	the MIDI script: channel, legato, CC numbers (editable)
config/audio.ini	USB audio out: its level (parked or on VOL) and the speaker while a host records (editable)
docs/SAFETY.md	rules for anyone changing the firmware

Licence

MIT, Copyright (c) 2026 Worldwave | Adara Barami. See LICENSE. A few files are Apache-2.0 instead, because they derive from Zephyr (Apache-2.0); NOTICE lists them.

Plaits, Marbles and stmlib are by Émilie Gillet (MIT), included unmodified in third_party/eurorack/; the MIDI note handling is ported from her Yarns. The USB-MIDI class is feldd's (bnjreece/feldd-sp1-firmware, MIT), included unmodified in third_party/feldd/. The board support builds on chattock/sp1-tape-looper, timknapen/SP-1-dev and ericlewis/sp1-midi (all MIT). Details in NOTICE and LICENSES/.