An on-the-fly reconfigurable low-level embedded servicearchitecture is presented as a means to improve scalability, improve conceptual comprehensibility, reduce humanerror and reduce development time when designing newsensor-based electronic musical instruments with real-timeresponsiveness. The implementation of the concept ina project called micro-OSC is described. Other sensorinterfacing products are evaluated in the context of DIYprototyping of musical instruments. The capabilities ofthe micro-OSC platform are demonstrated through a set ofexamples including resistive sensing, mixed digital-analogsystems, many-channel sensor interfaces and time-basedmeasurement methods.