[PD] Connection with sensors - new devices?

[Christian Klippel]

hi all,

Am Dienstag 20 Dezember 2005 17:41 schrieb Nuno Godinho:
> Olá João,
>
> I believe you can find alternatives to those here:
>
> http://infusionsystems.com/catalog/index.php
>
> Although expensive, I am not totally sure of this but I believe the great
> advantage of I-CubeX is that their sensor's signal can be easily converted
> to MIDI which makes them very easy to use in any kind of software,
> including PD.
>
> Adeus,
> Nuno
>

midi boxes have serveral drawbacks .... first, default cc messages have only 7 
bit, so you have a range of 0..127 only, unless you use a few other cc's 
(like pitch), or refer to rpn's/nrpn's.

second, midi in hardware is rather slow if you play around with sensor data 
from many sensors and/or high resolution. plus, it requires you to have a 
midi interface in your computer.

otoh, usb is fast, available on almost any computer/handheld by now and due to 
standards like hid, easy to use as well. oh, not to mention that there are 
midi definitions for usb, so a usb device can register as midi device to a 
host, making it accessible by the hosts midi system.

if you only want to do 1 or two sensors, midi (not usb or usb-midi) is nice. 
but for more, it becomes pretty limited quite soon. the problem is that 
sensors usually dont have a "stable" output like a fader. it varies much more 
over time, generating a constant flood of messages. i prefer to have sensors 
as much "realtime" as possible.....

and yes, 600 dollars for the system you mentioned is way too expensive. that 
just a rip-off, imho.

greets,

chris

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: pd-list-bounces at iem.at [mailto:pd-list-bounces at iem.at]
> > On Behalf Of João Miguel Pais
> > Sent: terça-feira, 20 de Dezembro de 2005 10:27
> > To: PD-List
> > Subject: [PD] Connection with sensors - new devices?
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I came upon some devices which could be interesting to use as
> > controllers with pd. I don't know if something like that
> > already exists, but wanted to ask if it seems possible to
> > modify/create a protocoll that would allow a connection
> > between those devices and PD itself. AS I am no programmer, I
> > really don't know if it is possible or not.
> >
> > The devices are in
> > http://www.techdesign.be/projects/023/023.htm and
> > http://www.techdesign.be/projects/008/008.htm . As said,
> > probably there's already something much more fine, but there
> > seem to be simple and portable enough to be quite handy for
> > an improvisation.
> >
> > Greetings,
> >
> > Joao
> >
> > --
> > Lugostr. 14
> > 79100 Freiburg i. Br.
> > Deutschland
> > +49 (0)761 7074997
> > jmmmp at arcor.de
> >
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