[PD-ot] project idea: ngspice for pd

[Christian Klippel]

hi all,

after thinking a bit about the recent discussion re: electric circuits in 
software, id like to share an idea and ask for help as well:

there is an fine, open-sourced circuit emulator available:
http://ngspice.sourceforge.net/

my idea is to implement ngspice as a pd object, or, on the long run, as a set 
of objects representing the parts. for a start i think it would be sufficient 
to have a single object that loads a netlist. that netlist has to be 
generated in en external tool, preferably from the gEDA suite 
http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/apps/geda/

after that it would be great to split up the rather big ngspice package into 
serveral objects, and eventually integrating a way to use a pd patch as a 
netlist source for it. that way, a circuit could be drawn as kind of 
subpatch.

altough i have no idea yet about the performance, it should be possible to run 
simpler circuits like oscillators and filter in realtime pretty well. and i 
mean in a way that it can be used in a performance, and not just "runs, but 
takes 90% cpu" .... ;)

also i think that for the purpose of making it a pd object, some things could 
be simplified regarding the math to calculate the net's. any math-heads 
around that like to help with that? trading accuracy for speed, in this case.

what do you think? anyone like to participate in such a project? for me alone 
that would be bit to much right now, but i think it would be a nice thing to 
be able to emulate real synth/filter/etc. circuits in pd and mix that with 
the realtime audio capabilities ....

greets,

chris