I'm probably only suggesting this because it's what I'm working on right now, so I'm sure there's got to be other ways of doing this. You can get cheap motors of all kinds from American Science and Surplus (http://www.sciplus.com). Then you could do something with a PIC and an RF receiver/transmitter. PD could send OSC commands wirelessly to the robot/marionnette, where the PIC would trigger current to the correct motor. It may not even need to be wireless, depending on what you mean by marionette. If you want it to have cables running to the ceiling, then you may as well skip wireless. If PIC is too thorny, you could also try a BASIC Stamp.

Have you ever read Über das Marionettentheater by Heinrich von Kleist?

-Ian

Samuel B Burt wrote:

Hi group!

I am sure some of you have experimented with using PD to control motors. My friend Joel Grip is planning to build a giant marionette puppet in his wood working class at the Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art that we will use in our multi-media improvisations.
The goal would be to perform live with acoustic instruments and/or computer generated/manipulated sound and have the marionette move in reaction to our playing. What I would like to know is where to find information on what types of motors to buy and how to interact them with PD.

I checked out makingthings.com because I had heard about their Max-motor interaction products. They sent me the following response to my inquiry:

    Hi Samuel.  While we have intermittently run into interest
    in having Teleo interact with PD, this interest has not,
    unfortunately, been enough to warrant the time and effort
    it would take us to develop it.  So, as of now the answer is
    sadly no.  This is not set in stone, however, and it is possible
    that at some point in the future, we'll move ahead with 

development for PD, either based on a general growing interest or in response to a particular job that we're doing. But for the moment, it's not very high on our list of priorities.

Also, I am told that their products are really designed to move smaller objects. Our life-size wooden marionette would probably be too heavy and wear the parts out too quickly. If anyone has any suggestions, they would be very appreciated.

Samuel Burt

Samuel B Burt brialey@juno.com wrote:

I am sure some of you have experimented with using PD to control motors. My friend Joel Grip is planning to build a giant marionette puppet in his wood working class at the Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art that we will use in our multi-media improvisations. The goal would be to perform live with acoustic instruments and/or computer generated/manipulated sound and have the marionette move in reaction to our playing. What I would like to know is where to find information on what types of motors to buy and how to interact them with PD.

http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/step/ http://www.ri.cmu.edu/ http://robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/related_links.html http://www-cdr.stanford.edu/Touch/ http://servomaster.sourceforge.net/ http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Robotics/Companies/?il=1

Warning: http://www.songlyricscollection.com/m/Mott%20the%20Hoople/The%20Hoople/Mario...