[PD] ICubeX Alternative

Malte Steiner steiner at block4.com
Mon Dec 26 17:04:37 CET 2005


Hello

> I was looking through the massive emails on the list and found one about 
> the ICubeX company (http://infusionsystems.com/catalog/index.php) After 
> looking through their products, I was very excited about the 
> applications of the products with PD, but I got angry at the pricing…. 
> Then saw an email comparing the LED pricing to be equivalent to about a 
> $300 hamburger. So my question is: are there any cheaper alternatives to 
> the ICube X company? If not, how hard would it be to duplicate those 
> products?
>

The prices are really cool, it is 10 times the value of the products 
when you get them at a electronics shop. My suggestion is to learn a bit 
about electronics and get the stuff for cheap, its not that heavy. 
Microcontrollers serve as the middleware between your sensors and 
actuators and computer with pd, Max, Blender, Director, custom software 
or whatever, so you have to learn a bit of microprogramming, but some 
are even programmed with Basic! And the stuff you usually do with them 
is basic indeed so Assembler should no problem either. Lots of free 
ressources on the web and there are some books out, google for physical 
computing.


http://itp.nyu.edu/~dbo3/physical/physical.html
they also created one of the reference books on this topic, highly 
recommended.


http://www.0x09.com/media/physcomp/

http://libarynth.f0.am/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Main/HumanInterfaceSystem

There is a learning curve but after mastering it you are more 
independent and not vendor locked.

Other route is hacking cheap devices like gamecontrollers which uses USB 
so their data arrives in the HID object in pd. Gamepads cost 5 euros and 
provides a lot of digital switches for example.

Cheers,

Malte
-- 
Malte Steiner
media art + development
-www.block4.com-




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