Tides has two official firmwares available.

You have a choice between an amazing AR slope generator with full voltage control, LFO style cycling options and logic outs that allow you to build complex modulation structures (by triggering other tides, peaks or any other gate or trigger input), or with the Sheep firmware a lovely wavetable oscillator. There are a couple of 3rd party firmwares available too I believe.

the stock firmware also works at audio rates, so can function as an independent voice.

An ideal mid level project to start with once you've got Branches or Ripples under your belt.

More accomplished builders might like to try the new Tides 2, which features quad outputs (each providing a variant on the main output with 4 different modes available).

The main advantages of Tides 1 over Tides 2 are the higher quality 16 bit dac and the Sheep wavetable VCO firmware, the original Tides uses 0603 passives which are much easier to hand solder than the 0402 parts Tides 2 uses, we generally recommend hot plate or air reflow instead of hand soldering PCB's with 0402 parts.