2011/8/29 Peter Brinkmann peter.brinkmann@googlemail.com

For the time being, we aren't posting binaries on a regular basis. Instead of following the links above, you probably want to get the source and build the Android apps yourself in order to make sure that you have the latest version. The code is available here: https://gitorious.org/pdlib

i'm not good with these things. I understood i needed ndk-build, so i downloaded the android ndk and modified the ScenePlayer makefile to point to the ndk-build folder. Then i gave "make" from the sceneplayer folder. It gave me some errors, but i can't understand what to do. Here is the log:

athos@athos-laptop:~/pd-for-android-GIT/ScenePlayer$ sudo make ~/Thinkering/android-ndk-r6/ndk-build Android NDK: /home/athos/pd-for-android-GIT/ScenePlayer/jni/Android.mk:rj_zcr~: LOCAL_MODULE_FILENAME should not include file extensions Android NDK: /home/athos/pd-for-android-GIT/ScenePlayer/jni/Android.mk:rj_zcr~: LOCAL_MODULE_FILENAME must not contain a file extension make[1]: ingresso nella directory "/home/athos/pd-for-android-GIT/ScenePlayer" /home/athos/Thinkering/android-ndk-r6/build/core/build-shared-library.mk:30: *** Android NDK: Aborting . Arresto. make[1]: uscita dalla directory "/home/athos/pd-for-android-GIT/ScenePlayer" make: *** [all] Errore 2

Scene download from the RjDj website isn't implemented yet. I'm hoping to change that soon, at least for those scenes that are available free of charge. For the time being, the easiest way to install scenes is to just copy the .rj folder to your sd-card, or you can fire up the rjzserver and on your computer and then download scenes from there.

The problem i have is that i can't download scenes from the rjdj site, neither on my pc or my phone. It seems you need an iphone for this.

Thanks for the explanations!

athos

I just started to deal with this stuff, and i have still many doubts and difficulties. For example, i still couldn't understand how to download scenes from the rjdj website on my android phone, it seems you just can do this with an iphone. I hope anyone reading this thread has some useful hints :)

Well I didn't manage it either. But I have an iphone too so I downloaded it on my iphone, and then fetched the scene on it and copied it on my hard drive. Then transfered it back to the android phone. I think I'm not supposed to do as such as RJDJ is an app for iphone, it's not directly related to the Sceneplayer on android (I mean rjdj didn't developp it). So the content you find on rjdj website is not supposed to be used on an android phone I guess (except for the examples scenes it seems), if they someday release a rjdj app then they may add this possibility.

Hey Dan,

I agree, Android's downfall is the poor audio implementation on the devices. How many have you tested? Can you post that data anywhere? It would be good to start collecting this. I think there are starting to be some Android devices with solid audio performance, so it would be good to have a source of data on this.

.hc

On Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:30 -0400, "Dan Wilcox" danomatika@gmail.com wrote:

I have to disagree with you. iOS is a better mobile os for running applications using libpd (aka RjDJ, Nodebeat, etc) since it has a low latency audio api. Android can't give you anything better then 20ms or so. If you want to build a realtime, I'm afraid you have to stick to iOS for now ...

This is why I'm targeting iOS for the upcoming robotcowboy app ... although I'd rather use a much freer platform.

On Aug 29, 2011, at 11:21 AM, Pierre Massat wrote:

...

Hi all,

I plan on buying my very first smartphone in the next few days. I want a phone running Android since it appears to be the best platform to run Pd. I m just not quite sure about the way Pd can be used with a smartphone. Can we run Pd-extended, or just use the patches, or is it just some sort of an API that can be used when developping an app? I m totally new to this, so please excuse the (possibly abyssal) silliness of my questions.

Cheers!

Pierre

---

Dan Wilcox danomatika.com robotcowboy.com

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Seconding the dissatisfaction with real-time audio support on Android in general.

I've only recently jumped on the android train (Samsung Droid Charge) and I've noticed that the only audio apps that are usable are of the sequencing / drum machine variety, because they don't depend so much on low-latency. Any apps where tapping on the screen is supposed to generate a sound exposes serious latency issues.

I've heard that gingerbread made some changes to the available audio API, but supposedly they didn't substantially improve things. According to the "people who know" many of the latency issues are low-level (drivers and actual hardware limitations) that have as much to do with the device manufacturers as Android itself. One of the downsides of an open platform that runs on a wide variety of devices. I haven't had a chance to survey the situation with common audio CODECS being used on these devices and whether the drivers are available open-source, and/or could be hacked for better latency.

I haven't been able to test much with libpd yet. So far any time any libpd-based app tries to access my microphone I get this crazy noise (actually sounds kind of cool, but definitely not the intended sound). I haven't tried building the latest from the repo, I didn't realize the binaries were substantially out-of-date (I didn't bother to check any timestamps).

If that doesn't fix the issue I'll be sure to get in touch with the devs and see where the issue may lie.

-s

On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 4:54 PM, Hans-Christoph Steiner hans@at.or.atwrote:

Hey Dan,

I agree, Android's downfall is the poor audio implementation on the devices. How many have you tested? Can you post that data anywhere? It would be good to start collecting this. I think there are starting to be some Android devices with solid audio performance, so it would be good to have a source of data on this.

.hc

On Mon, 29 Aug 2011 16:30 -0400, "Dan Wilcox" danomatika@gmail.com wrote:

...

I have to disagree with you. iOS is a better mobile os for running applications using libpd (aka RjDJ, Nodebeat, etc) since it has a low latency audio api. Android can't give you anything better then 20ms or so. If you want to build a realtime, I'm afraid you have to stick to iOS for now ...

This is why I'm targeting iOS for the upcoming robotcowboy app ... although I'd rather use a much freer platform.

On Aug 29, 2011, at 11:21 AM, Pierre Massat wrote:

...

Hi all,

I plan on buying my very first smartphone in the next few days. I want

a phone running Android since it appears to be the best platform to run Pd. I m just not quite sure about the way Pd can be used with a smartphone. Can we run Pd-extended, or just use the patches, or is it just some sort of an API that can be used when developping an app? I m totally new to this, so please excuse the (possibly abyssal) silliness of my questions.

...

...

Cheers!

Pierre

---

Dan Wilcox danomatika.com robotcowboy.com

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Hi Pierre,

On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 09:32:31AM +0200, Pierre Massat wrote:

Now regarding my use of Pd in Android. I don't need to do anything fancy, all i'd like to develop for now is a small 2 or 4-track recorder, to help me work on my new songs in a more flexible way than with my old cassette recorder. So how should i go about it? Can i use ScenePlayer with a patch that does just that? Or should i develop my own native app in android using libpd (which is still very obscure to me at the moment)?

As Michael Noble mentioned, I really think PdDroidParty could help you here.

Bascially you can make your 4-track recorder in regular old Pd, then copy your 4-track recorder patch to your Android device's sdcard via USB or whatever, start PdDroidParty, et voilà.

http://mccormick.cx/projects/PdDroidParty

I genuinely beleive this is the easiest way to get your Pd patches running on Android.

I am just about to do a new release of PdDroidParty which has a bunch of great stuff like SVG themable Pd widgets, and makes it easier to distribute your patch as a standalone Android app. Will post here when that happens.

Cheers,

Chris.

http://mccormick.cx

I think that it's not possible at the moment, but Chris mentionned a todolist :) so i guess it will be possible. There's already plenty to test out.

@Dan : yes I want an equivalent for iphone ! I guess many other people would, please keep us posted on your work. I was asking Chris if I was considering porting it to ithings, he answered me that we should ask on the pd-list... so here it is :)

2011/8/31 athos bacchiocchi athos.bacchiocchi@gmail.com

2011/8/31 Chris McCormick chris@mccormick.cx

...

As Michael Noble mentioned, I really think PdDroidParty could help you here.

hey, that's really nice, thanks for sharing! I'm thinkering with it, is there a way to get data from the phone's accelerometer?

athos

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Hi Chris, I tried PdDroidParty on my cousin's phone over the week-end. It's so easy to install and use it's scary. Thank you for sharing this!

Now two questions :

• Do you plan on improving the GUI just a little bit? (I like the rough look

of Pd's native GUI, but i think it'd be nice if we could have a little color on the sliders, bangs and toggles).

• Can i use [shell] in Android in order to delete and create folders, and

generally manage the tracks i record on the phone?

Thanks again, it's really neat!

Pierre

2011/9/1 Chris McCormick chris@mccormick.cx

Hi,

On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 06:00:12PM +0200, athos bacchiocchi wrote:

...

2011/8/31 Chris McCormick chris@mccormick.cx

...

As Michael Noble mentioned, I really think PdDroidParty could help you here.

hey, that's really nice, thanks for sharing! I'm thinkering with it, is there a way to get data from the phone's accelerometer?

No there isn't. Maybe this is something I should add. I will put it on the TODO list.

Cheers,

Chris.

---

http://mccormick.cx

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This looks really nice! I'm looking forward to the next release! I'll buy my own phone tonight (hopefuly...) and i'll try your abstractions sometime soon.

I'd be glad to help if i can, but a quick look at your blog remembered me that i have very limited skills... I can always test stuff on my own device if you want and if it makes sense.

I forgot to ask : can i use the tilt-sensor in PdDroidParty?

Pierre

2011/9/5 Chris McCormick chris@mccormick.cx

Hi Pierre,

...

Hi Chris, I tried PdDroidParty on my cousin's phone over the week-end. It's so easy to install and use it's scary. Thank you for sharing this!

Great stuff, I'm glad it works easily for you. These kind words make me motivated to get the new release out ASAP! :)

(My Android phone died last night unfortunately but I will try to buy a new one today as the new release is very close and I might just be able to fit it into the family budget with some stretching heheheh).

...

Now two questions :

• Do you plan on improving the GUI just a little bit? (I like the rough

look of Pd's native GUI, but i think it'd be nice if we could have a little color on the sliders, bangs and toggles).

Attached is a screenshot of what I am working on right now. You can theme the supported widgets with SVGs. E.g. an SVG image for toggle-on and a different one for toggle-off. You can have different SVGs according to labels and sendname too. So for example you could have all toggles themed with one look, and then give one toggle the "send" field of "record" themed differently with an SVG ("Toggle-record-off.svg") that looks like a record button.

...

• Can i use [shell] in Android in order to delete and create folders, and

generally manage the tracks i record on the phone?

I have made an abstraction called [loadsave] which wraps openpanel and savepanel in desktop Pd and lets you have a nice Android style interface on the device. That gives you a small amount of access to the filesystem, but not everything you mention. If you use the [menubutton] abstraction you can put things in the Android menu too. See the other screenshot for that.

However, your question begs a larger one which is support for a limited number of externals. It would be cool to support [shell] and also the OSC externals in PdDroidParty, but it really depends on whether they have used Hans' Makefile-template which makes compiling for Android trivial. I will put this on the TODO list to investigate.

In the end I would like to keep the number of externals as small as possible so that things work on vanilla Pd on the desktop, but if someone really needs something I am happy to look at putting it in. This is especially true if you get the PdDroidParty code checked out and do the work of making an external compile in yourself. :D

Cheers,

Chris.

---

http://mccormick.cx

On Sep 5, 2011, at 7:48 PM, Chris McCormick wrote:

On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 02:49:41PM +0200, Pierre Massat wrote:

...

I forgot to ask : can i use the tilt-sensor in PdDroidParty?

Not yet, but it is on my TODO list. Also multitouch support, which
people have requested too.

Should be easy if you start with the code in Peter Brinkmann's
ScenePlayer.

.hc

"[W]e have invented the technology to eliminate scarcity, but we are
deliberately throwing it away to benefit those who profit from
scarcity." -John Gilmore

On Sep 5, 2011, at 4:05 AM, Chris McCormick wrote:

Hi Pierre,

...

Hi Chris, I tried PdDroidParty on my cousin's phone over the week- end. It's so easy to install and use it's scary. Thank you for sharing this!

Great stuff, I'm glad it works easily for you. These kind words make
me motivated to get the new release out ASAP! :)

(My Android phone died last night unfortunately but I will try to
buy a new one today as the new release is very close and I might just be
able to fit it into the family budget with some stretching heheheh).

...

Now two questions :

• Do you plan on improving the GUI just a little bit? (I like the

rough look of Pd's native GUI, but i think it'd be nice if we could have a
little color on the sliders, bangs and toggles).

Attached is a screenshot of what I am working on right now. You can
theme the supported widgets with SVGs. E.g. an SVG image for toggle-on and a different one for toggle-off. You can have different SVGs according to labels and sendname too. So for example you could have all toggles
themed with one look, and then give one toggle the "send" field of "record" themed differently with an SVG ("Toggle-record-off.svg") that looks
like a record button.

...

• Can i use [shell] in Android in order to delete and create

folders, and generally manage the tracks i record on the phone?

I have made an abstraction called [loadsave] which wraps openpanel and savepanel in desktop Pd and lets you have a nice Android style
interface on the device. That gives you a small amount of access to the
filesystem, but not everything you mention. If you use the [menubutton]
abstraction you can put things in the Android menu too. See the other screenshot
for that.

However, your question begs a larger one which is support for a
limited number of externals. It would be cool to support [shell] and also
the OSC externals in PdDroidParty, but it really depends on whether they
have used Hans' Makefile-template which makes compiling for Android trivial. I
will put this on the TODO list to investigate.

In the end I would like to keep the number of externals as small as possible so that things work on vanilla Pd on the desktop, but if
someone really needs something I am happy to look at putting it in. This is especially true if you get the PdDroidParty code checked out and do
the work of making an external compile in yourself. :D

[shell] is in ggee and [system] is in motex, both of those use the
Makefile Template, so they should be really easy to compile for
Android. How are you installing externals with PdDroidParty? It'd be
nice to have a simple, common folder to drop the whole library in, say
something like /sdcard/pd-externals.

.hc

I hate it when they say, "He gave his life for his country." Nobody
gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. - Admiral Gene LeRocque

On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 7:46 PM, Chris McCormick chris@mccormick.cx wrote:

On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 06:20:26PM -0400, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

...

[shell] is in ggee and [system] is in motex, both of those use the Makefile Template, so they should be really easy to compile for Android. How are you installing externals with PdDroidParty? It'd be nice to have a simple, common folder to drop the whole library in, say something like /sdcard/pd-externals.

Hm, that's a good idea, and then the user could put the externals they want in that folder themselves. I guess I just use libpd's command to add that folder to Pd's path?

You'll probably need to copy the binaries to internal storage because /sdcard is mounted as noexec. I ran into that problem last year and it took me ages to make sense of the error message... Cheers, Peter

On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 11:39:37PM -0400, Peter Brinkmann wrote:

On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 7:46 PM, Chris McCormick chris@mccormick.cx wrote:

...

On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 06:20:26PM -0400, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:

...

[shell] is in ggee and [system] is in motex, both of those use the Makefile Template, so they should be really easy to compile for Android. How are you installing externals with PdDroidParty? It'd be nice to have a simple, common folder to drop the whole library in, say something like /sdcard/pd-externals.

Hm, that's a good idea, and then the user could put the externals they want in that folder themselves. I guess I just use libpd's command to add that folder to Pd's path?

You'll probably need to copy the binaries to internal storage because /sdcard is mounted as noexec. I ran into that problem last year and it took me ages to make sense of the error message...

Yikes, thanks for the heads-up!

Chris.

http://mccormick.cx

Yes, this seems way more simple to me! Ok, now i guess i need to get a smartphone. :P

Thanks!

Pierre

2011/8/31 Hans-Christoph Steiner hans@at.or.at

On Aug 30, 2011, at 9:12 PM, Chris McCormick wrote:

Hi Pierre,

...

On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 09:32:31AM +0200, Pierre Massat wrote:

...

Now regarding my use of Pd in Android. I don't need to do anything fancy, all i'd like to develop for now is a small 2 or 4-track recorder, to help me work on my new songs in a more flexible way than with my old cassette recorder. So how should i go about it? Can i use ScenePlayer with a patch that does just that? Or should i develop my own native app in android using libpd (which is still very obscure to me at the moment)?

As Michael Noble mentioned, I really think PdDroidParty could help you here.

Bascially you can make your 4-track recorder in regular old Pd, then copy your 4-track recorder patch to your Android device's sdcard via USB or whatever, start PdDroidParty, et voilà.

http://mccormick.cx/projects/**PdDroidPartyhttp://mccormick.cx/projects/PdDroidParty

I genuinely beleive this is the easiest way to get your Pd patches running on Android.

I am just about to do a new release of PdDroidParty which has a bunch of great stuff like SVG themable Pd widgets, and makes it easier to distribute your patch as a standalone Android app. Will post here when that happens.

Cheers,

Chris.

Sorry, I forgot to mention this! I agree, its the easiest and perhaps the best way :)

.hc

------------------------------**------------------------------**

There is no way to peace, peace is the way. -A.J. Muste