Blue stribe1 kit pics and movies

A really nice Flickr set from machinecollective, demoing a stribe1 kit in progress built with custom blue LEDs.

Quasimidi Sirius User Manual pdf (English)

sirius_manual.pdf

Why am I posting this here?

Well, I recently acquired a rare and wonderful Quasimidi Sirius keyboard/workstation. Though the manufacturer (Quasimidi) has been defunct for many years, I figured I'd be able to find and download a manual for this quite sophisticated device. HOWEVER, the most-easily-found version of the download is a rough scan in a damaged PDF file that would not print on my printer. Very frustrating.

A good 2 hrs of web searching ultimately brought me here: http://www.quasimidisupport.de/html/downloads1.htm where lives a very nice pdf of the manual that prints-out crisp and clear. Yay!

I hope this information will be of use to other seekers.

monome 40h + 3 stribe1 modules = granular synthesis

Stribe1 Monome Sampler Scrubber from CuriousInventor on Vimeo.

Scott from curiousinventor has whipped-up this super-cool demo of a monome 40h working with 3 stribe1s. The devices are connected via software (Max/MSP). Links to the Max patch coming soon!

Finally, a reason to get an iPhone

TouchOSC is an iPhone / iPod Touch application that lets you send and receive Open Sound Control messages over a Wi-Fi network using the UDP protocol.

The application allows you to remote control and receive feedback from software and hardware that implements the OSC protocol such as Pure Data and Max/MSP.

TouchOSC

Arduino audio projects

Just a few 'tube videos I found of Arduino music-making:

Auduino - The Arduino synthesiser
Arduino polyphonic synthesizer
Arduino drum machine
another Arduino drum machine
Arduino Sequencer

Plus check out this cool CDM article I just found that pretty much covers it: Making Music with the Arduino: Wires, Solder, and Sound Round-Up

Fabulous progress on Stribe1... Stribe8!

Stribe1 x 8 + new max/msp software demo from CuriousInventor on Vimeo.

Scott's been busy putting together a stribe1 x 8 and writing new firmware and patches. Also some promising experiments using 4051 chips to multiplex AD inputs on the Arduino. More info here

A new simple Stribe app from Thyeks

This video is from "Thyeks", who lives in the Carribean. Here's a link to his app if you want to mess with it: [link]

stribe1 demo

Using the app Scalar with a pair of Stribe1 prototypes:

The Stribe is Dead... Long Live the Stribe!

The original Stribe Prototype kit has been discontinued (oh no!), but a new modular kit is taking it's place: the single-strip Stribe1 (yay!).

The Stribe1 kit (also available assembled) gives you everything you need to build a "single stribe" touch-control module, minus the microcontroller.



Multiple Stribe1s can be chained together with a ribbon connector and attached to the microcontroller of your choice.



For now we have building-block firmware and patches for the ATMEGA-based Arduino and Arduino MINI. Bitwacker (PIC) firmware is in the works.

The kit consists of a long and narrow PCB (~ 9 3/4" x 7/8"), a single 170mm touchstrip, 2 columns of 64 LEDs (128 LEDs total), and all the supporting circuitry, driver chips, ribbon connector, plexiglas enclosure, etc.



The instructions include step-by-step details on placing and soldering the parts, wiring it to an Arduino, and using the software.*

I think it would be fairly straightforward to hook one (or more) of these up to a monome 40h, but I'll defer the details to those who know the monome's internals better than I do. (Note: due to MUCH interest in this idea, I'll be trying this soon with my own 40h and will post my results)

The Stribe1 project was made possible with the generous involvement of Scott Driscoll of Curious Inventor (curiousinventor.com). He was kind enough to put my name on the project (and circuit board) even though he actually did most of the work.

Get yours here: http://curiousinventor.com/kits/stribe

* Note: assembly instructions are done, but we still haven't posted firmware, patches and Arduino wiring... Soon!

Blue Ribbons

I was pleased and flattered that the Stribe receceived TWO "Editor's Choice" blue ribbons this weekend at Maker Faire Austin 2008. Thanks guys! It's a wonderful feeling to be recognized for all the long nights of hard work.



I made some terrific new friends and got to talk "geek" non-stop for 2 days!






And of course it's always a distinct pleasure watching people discover the Stribe!

Special thanks go to stretta for his demo app, and to Vlad Spears for Scalar.

Goin to the Faire

Heading to Austin tomorrow for the 2008 Maker Faire.

I'm bringing the Stribe along with a new firmware rev from Kid Sputnik to show off, along with an updated version of a Max patch written by Stretta.

Last year I went to the Faire in Austin with the original Stribe prototype under my arm and just wandered around, showing it to a couple folks. Then a few months ago I had my first booth at the San Mateo Faire - which was incredible. I plan to bring a bit less stuff, and the booth won't be quite as "fancy" this time.

I'm psyched to meet up with Scott Driscoll from Curious Inventor (http://www.curiousinventor.com), David Fowler from ucHobby (http://www.uchobby.com), and several others for a weekend of gettin' our geek on, and BBQ.

Scott and I have designed a new product, called "Stribe1", which is a single-strip stribe module - one touchstrip and 2 columns of LEDs. Soon we'll be selling these on his curiousinventor.com site, along with a variety of touchstrips from SpectraSymbol. There will be an official announcement and lots of pics and demos soon. Can't wait to see what people make with 'em!

Got my cowboy hat on and I'm mostly packed... I'll try to post some pics as the weekend progresses.

How to Make a Cheap Multitouch Pad

via MTmini

The above demo shows 1/2 of the ingredients of a "true" multi-touch display.

To make images appear under your fingers instead of over on the computer's screen, takes only a few more steps:

1) Remove the IR filter from the camera so it can detect infrared, then add a filter over the lens to ignore visible light, so the camera only "sees" IR.

2) Add an IR source inside the box, pointing up (many commercially available security cameras already come configured with IR "blast" arrays, or they can be purchased as a separate unit, or make your own).

3) Exchange the tracing paper for a material that is still translucent yet allows IR light thru.

4) Add a little LCD projector next to the camera in the box, also pointed up.

TaDa!

Now your hands will be bathed in invisible infrared light. As your fingers approach and/or touch the surface, the camera "sees" IR blobs, which are then processed in software to differentiate touch and other gestures. The "Touchlib" library includes everything you need to process the images (as seen in the video). Now you project the image up onto the touch surface from below. The image is projected in the visible spectrum and so doesn't interfere with the IR blobs being received by the camera.

There is also a way to get crisper IR blobs, without bathing the user's hands in IR, by using a technology called "Frustrated Total Internal Refraction" (FTIR), popularized by Jeff Han. FTIR relies on the unique properties of acrylic sheet, e.g. it is extremely reflective on the inside surface, until touched (or until it gets dirty). By shooting IR into the edges of the sheet, touches are "seen" by the IR camera whenever the internal refractive properties of the acrylic are "frustrated" by being touched. Each touch bounces a blob of IR down into the camera.

*

I've been having some great conversations about multi-touch lately. What constitutes multi-touch? Does dual-touch count? Can multi-touch be "faked" on a single-touch surface using close timing of events (e.g. milliseconds apart)? What if you use the same approach on a dual-touch surface? Is this how the iPhone works (e.g. software detection of finger-spacing)? What about the Macbook's dual-touch mousepad? How does that work, anyways? Which technologies are dominating, if any? Capacitive, grid o' wires, heat sensing, IR bath? Which approach is typically used for which commercial application?

More Tangerine Stribe

Dreamy stribe music from Mark Bokowiec in the UK

scalar

A little demo of 'scalar', triggered by a stribe. Scalar is written by vlad spears, of 'balron' fame. By changing simple things like the sensor poll rate, sticky or non-sticky values, MIDI scale, and instrument mappings, I am able to play the stribe in a variety of modes.

Of course the stribe strips can trigger a much higher resolution map than this (1024 potential points of resolution per strip). Though it doesn't demonstrate this unique aspect of the stribe, it's still fun to play with. The strips are much more sensitive than buttons, requiring the lightest touch. Rolling a finger on it's "ball" can produce a variety of subtle effects, a slide from one note to the next, or produce a very rapid 'fingered' pattern.

LED feedback is minimal at this point. Still working on the firmware...

stribe.org
scalar

monome & stribe in the UK

A newly-constructed Stribe Prototype effecting simple single-voice sequences running on a Monome 40h.

Soundhack

freesound bundle: the freesound bundle is a collection of free vst/rtas/au, mac/windows plugins

Tenebre

Tenebre - Platinum Standard
Interesting lo-fi-ish production and good playing on this instrumental track. The sound is stylistically reminiscent of Pavement, Sebadoh, and Slint, with a little dose of Elephant Six thrown in, and at the end some bells. More bells!

Thought food

Giant Alphanumeric Nixie Tube available for lots of $ on the 'bay


Sometimes I go to this page and just listen to the default sounds



A couple of 3-dimensional alphabets. Info on the above alphabet. The image below I came across randomly and I can't find any information about it, so let me know.


Another 3D alphabet


CNMAT's experimental spherical speaker


Interactive Acoustic Modeling from Princeton. video

Max/MSP night school at CNMAT

Hallowed hall

Watch my ever-growing-in-detail blog post here: http://soundwidgets.com/smf/index.php?topic=204.msg741#msg741


Hangin' with the big kids

Custom Controllers

I built these to order for a customer. I was sad to see them go...