Larsio Paint Music is a love letter to Mario Paint -- the mouse-driven art creation cartridge for Super Nintendo. It included a wonderfully fun music composition mode where you could draw notes on a music staff using different samples and synth voices and then play them. I decided to recreate this classic on a modern microcontroller in CircuitPython as Larsio Paint Music (LPM).
LPM runs on a Metro RP2350 or the Fruit Jam. With USB mouse-input, HDMI video output, and stereo I2S DAC audio output for synthesized and sampled sounds, you can try your hand at making music the semi old-fashioned way -- with a music staff and pixelated sprites for notes!
Some of the functionality used here (USB Host for mouse in particular) is hot off the press. You'll want to install CircuitPython 10.0.0-beta.3 or higher on your board rather than the 9.2.7 release version mentioned in the CircuitPython Install page.
Parts
The project can be built using the Adafruit Metro RP2350 with PSRAM and some additional parts (DAC and DVI breakout) or the Adafruit Fruit Jam.
Other project parts (used with either microcontroller dev board):
HDMI/DVI Display
An HDMI/DVI display that can be set to 640x480 mode.
This one is great because it can be set to 4:3 mode so your image won't be stretched, and it has a 3.5mm TRS audio input for the internal speakers.
Page last edited September 03, 2025
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