What they did
The developer behind Modded Cycles, who goes by 18nelli, felt the Elektron Model:Cycles groovebox had been left behind, since it has had no official update since May 2021. He opened the unit, documented its parts and worked with Claude Code to write custom firmware for it. The first feature was six-track audio over USB. The Verge reported the project as part of a wave of AI-assisted firmware for cheap and older music gear, including a Zoom multi-effects pedal that another hobbyist, Roman Rusinov, got running amp captures and impulse responses.
How it went
The USB audio hack turned into a community project with several mods from other contributors, standalone firmwares, and a way to turn a Model:Cycles into a Model:Samples. The reporter watched five firmware updates land in one day on the project's Discord. 18nelli says he would have spent a huge amount of time on a single feature without an LLM, and now plans to stop adding features for a while to polish the code and fix bugs.
Worth knowing
Custom firmware can brick a device and is less tested than the maker's. Elektron warns against it and has banned links to custom firmware from its forums, while M-Vave has released open firmware and a dev kit for its FM-1. Expect to document the hardware yourself before the agent can help.