[PD] libpd and BUG Labs

[Andrew Turley]

On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 10:06 AM, Hans-Christoph Steiner <hans at at.or.at> wrote:
>
> On Apr 21, 2011, at 10:39 AM, Andrew Turley wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 9:26 AM, Simon Wise <simonzwise at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 21/04/11 16:47, errordeveloper at gmail.com wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 09:15:29PM -0400, Andrew Turley wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Nothing revolutionary, but I thought people might enjoy seeing Pure
>>>>> Data on yet another platform (in this case, running in OSGi on ARM).
>>>
>>>>
>>>> That's great, nevertheless your company's product or too expensive
>>>> for what they are! May be if you were to come up with something like
>>>> Panda or Beagle board, but more pro-audio oriented (i.e. with ballanced
>>>> mic input and good 96Hz converters) - many people here would be
>>>> intereseted :) It doesn't have to be OMAP (in fact better not OMAP), but
>>>> any other multicore ARM with VPF, e.g. Marvell ARMADA. Contact me if you
>>>> do need more information on this .. And certainly a cheaper enclosure ..
>>>> I see that your company make these nice and expensive eclosures ..which
>>>> would rather be optional, from my point of view!
>>>
>>> Clearly then these devices are not for you (and audio isn't their focus)
>>> but
>>> there is surely a place for a modular system like this ... clearly a lot
>>> of
>>> effort has gone into creating a slick set of units. Why not sell them if
>>> there are people who want them?
>>>
>>> If you are wanting to do similar yourself .. their software development
>>> is
>>> open source, downloadable from the site and the work they have done is
>>> available for you to use in any other open source project.
>>>
>>> I have only just looked over the site, but if the internals have had
>>> similar
>>> care and attention as the design and exterior it would be a nice kit to
>>> work
>>> with, and because of the nice exterior etc it would be more attractive to
>>> some kinds of clients. I'd say how expensive the kits seem depends on how
>>> much you put a $ value on your own development time .. if you develop
>>> stuff
>>> for your own pleasure/learning/satisfaction/whatever then maybe it isn't
>>> for
>>> you. If you don't have the cash it isn't for you either, but the work put
>>> into the code has been paid for by their customers, and that code is free
>>> for you to use (in FLOSS projects of course).
>>>
>>> It's nice to see Pd have a wide range of uses.
>>>
>>> Simon
>>>
>>
>> errordeveloper, I agree, the price point doesn't work for everybody.
>> To be clear, I wasn't trying to sell units, I just wanted to share
>> something that I had done. We've tossed around the idea of a high-end
>> audio module. I'll pass that information along if we end up doing it.
>
> I think it doesn't hurt to have different options out there, so while I
> agree bugs labs is more money than barebones embedded platforms, if you want
> the ease they offer, it could be worth the money.
>
> I'm curious whether you had a particular idea in mind when porting Pd to the
> bug labs setup.  I think there is a lot of potential in using audio in
> product design.
>
> .hc
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> "We have nothing to fear from love and commitment." - New York Senator Diane
> Savino, trying to convince the NY Senate to pass a gay marriage bill
>
>

I didn't have any specific ideas in mind when I was working on getting
libpd running on the BUG. I started working on it when I started with
the company, as a way to gain some understanding of OSGi and jni
bindings. I thought it might be useful to experiment with ideas like
graphical event-driven programming and WYSIWYG GUI design, and I
thought libpd might be a good way to get those things up and running
quickly. I've also been interested in prototyping digital instrument
design, and having a small programmable DSP platform with easy access
to an accelerometer, camera, and analog and digital IO seemed like a
useful tool.

andy