[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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