Message: 1

Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 12:34:28 -0000

From: "Nuno Godinho" <eu@nunogodinho.com>

Subject: [PD] Which sensor controller should I use with PD?

To: "'PD-List'" <pd-list@iem.at>

Message-ID: <E1Epm87-0007Hn-00@mail.iem.at>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hi,

I first started using PD a couple of weeks ago because I am building a small

interactive video project which needs to read values from a bend-sensor. 

To be more specific, I will have PD play a video loop. If you blow on the

bend-sensor (attached to a paper sheet which will work as a sail), PD will

show different video loops. It will have different video loops for different

blowing strengths. Once you stop blowing it will switch back to the initial

video loop.

So basically I just need to receive inputs from a sensor. I am not into

electronics so I wouldn't want to build my own sensors controller. Also,

although I am a programmer I'd rather not have to learn to build complex

programs in order to just read a simple sensor into PD. My question is:

which solution or solutions would you advise me to use?

At the same time if I'm buying something I'd like to be able to use it in

the future for other interactive projects I may do in the future so the

solution I choose should be flexible.

I knew about I-CubeX but it's way to expensive.

I knew about TELEO but forgot about them when I learned that it didn't use

MIDI. Now I was told that after all MIDI is not even a good solution since

it is so slow so maybe TELEO is fine after all. Alto it seems to be modular

enough to grow with my future needs. Would you use TELEO? I asked

MakingThings (they build TELEO) if Teleo supports PD and they told me it

doesn't but they eventually plan to add support to PD in the future. Do you

know if I can still use TELEO with PD using HID or something else and if it

is reasonable to use it for my purposes?

I read about Arduino but I got a little scared with the online examples

because it seems that you have to program the board even to read a simple

sensor. Isn't this overkill for what I want? I also read about home-built

controllers. I guess I could learn how to do it, but I am working on so many

projects at the same time and have so few time that I'd rather be working on

an upper lever of abstraction instead of reinventing the wheel. Anyway maybe

I'm wrong. What do you think?

I heard about Christian Klippel's MultIO and heard it's good but I know

nothing about it. Would it do what I need?

So, after all my loose ideas:

What controller would you advise me to use?

Also, do you know where I can buy a nice bend sensor?

Thank you!

Nuno