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 pricingÂ…. 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-