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Andrew Benson

 arrived at Cycling '74 HQ, and I was all too happy to give it a test drive. After having read the impressive spec sheets I was eager to see if the performance of the board lived up to all the promise. I quickly set to work putting it through its paces.

First, let's look at what the Eobody OEM board is all about. The stripped-bare circuit board is a no-frills DIY version of the popular Eobody2, a high-speed MIDI sensor interface that communicates with your computer using USB. Instead of the 1/4" input jacks typical of the Eobody product line, analog sensors and triggers are connected directly to the board via the provided 0.1" header pins, a simple and common connector in electronics prototyping these days. The board is based around the Microchip PIC 18F4550 chip, which features high-speed USB communication and 12-bit Analog-to-Digital Converters. The OEM board provides 13 analog sensor inputs and 16 digital I/O pins, all of which can be assigned to specific MIDI messages using the downloadable "EoMessage help" patch provided by Eowave.

There are already several hardware sensor interfaces on the market already, many of which are also capable of any number of other tasks, but after spending a little time with the device I discovered what makes the Eobody board special. It does exactly what it needs to do really well, and nothing more, and comes in a pretty tight little package. Being the tinkerer and scrounger that I am, I've gotten used to setting aside several hours just to get up to speed with whatever new hardware I have on my workbench. Rarely do I come across something that I can just plug in, attach a sensor to, and start going.

Once I hooked up the USB cable to my computer and opened Max, I could already see the "eobodyOEM" listed in my MIDI devices. To get started, I created a simple testing patch with a midiin->midiparse->route setup so that I could quickly check different inputs as I connected them. The first thing I wanted to check out was the analog input, so I dug out a little 50K slide pot to wire up.

Wiring up components to work with the OEM board was pretty straightforward. I just had to wire up the potentiometer as a voltage divider and crimp on some female header 

 to the ends of the wires. Luckily, I happen to keep an ample stock of them in my parts drawer and my handy crimping tool nearby. One could also go ahead and solder wires directly to the headers for more permanent configurations, but I personally like having an easy way to disconnect things at will. Once I had my slide pot wired up, I connected it to the board using the instructions given. While my iron was hot, I went ahead and wired up a toggle switch and accelerometer I had lying around as well.

By hooking up a slider object to the output of my MIDI routing setup, I could already see that my slide pot is sending MIDI CC-0 (0-127). Now that I know it's working, I open up the EoMessage patch downloaded from 

 to play around with some of the settings. This patch provides a simple interface for changing the behavior of each analog input. The first thing I wanted to check out was the 12-bit CC setting boasted about in the product documentation. Once I change this setting, I notice that my CC-0 is still acting the same, but now I'm also getting numbers coming through CC-64. According to the Eobody manual, this number is the 5 "Least Significant Bits (LSB)" of the analog-to-digital conversion, which are normally discarded for the standard 7-bit MIDI CC message. Combining these two numbers together will extend the precision of the analog input to a 12-bit 0-4095 range instead of 0-127. To do this, all we need to do is left-shift our CC-0 number 5 places and add the CC-64 value. In addition to the regular and 12-bit CC, you can also use analog inputs as any other standard MIDI message.

Adding extra precision to the analog conversion also means we'll see more electronic signal noise in our data, especially when using the USB bus power. To mitigate this, the OEM board also features a firmware-based low-pass filter to smooth the data as well as a noise gate. In practice, I found the filter to be far more useful, and quite effective at reducing jitter in the data. This became extra useful when I tried out my accelerometer, which can produce some pretty erratic responses. Having most of the data-conditioning all happen in firmware also means I don't have to write it into my Max patch.

Next up, I hooked up my toggle switch to one of the digital inputs. To check this out, I had to open up the subpatch for OEM board specific messages and activate the input pin I want to read. Once that is done I just set it to send Note on-off messages and I'm off and running. Turning my switch on and off I see the note messages coming through my test patch.

By the time I finished hooking up all the electronic components and sorting it out in Max, I hadn't even been at it for an hour. No hassles with firmware programming, no weird interfacing hardware, and no need for third-party Max externals or editing software (the Eobody editor is a Max patch, of course) meant I could focus on the important stuff - writing my Max patch and thinking about how I'm going to control it. While it might not water your plants or check your email for you, the Eobody OEM board does allow you to quickly get lots of sensor data into Max with minimal effort. The no-frills, bare PCB package and basic header-pin interface also gives you the freedom to design your own custom project enclosure and use interface hardware that is specific to your own needs. The 

 provides the flexibility and small footprint of a DIY controller interface combined with the simplicity and robust DSP of the Eobody product line.

This week the new Eowave OEM USB boards arrived at Cycling '74 HQ, and I was all too happy to give it a test drive. After having read the impressive spec sheets I was eager to see if the performance of the board lived up to all the promise. I quickly set to work putting it through its paces.

First, let's look at what the Eobody OEM board is all about. The stripped-bare circuit board is a no-frills DIY version of the popular Eobody2, a high-speed MIDI sensor interface that communicates with your computer using USB. Instead of the 1/4" input jacks typical of the Eobody product line, analog sensors and triggers are connected directly to the board via the provided 0.1" header pins, a simple and common connector in electronics prototyping these days. The board is based around the Microchip PIC 18F4550 chip, which features high-speed USB communication and 12-bit Analog-to-Digital Converters. The OEM board provides 13 analog sensor inputs and 16 digital I/O pins, all of which can be assigned to specific MIDI messages using the downloadable "EoMessage help" patch provided by Eowave.


Wiring up components to work with the OEM board was pretty straightforward. I just had to wire up the potentiometer as a voltage divider and crimp on some female header connectors to the ends of the wires. Luckily, I happen to keep an ample stock of them in my parts drawer and my handy crimping tool nearby. One could also go ahead and solder wires directly to the headers for more permanent configurations, but I personally like having an easy way to disconnect things at will. Once I had my slide pot wired up, I connected it to the board using the instructions given. While my iron was hot, I went ahead and wired up a toggle switch and accelerometer I had lying around as well.

By hooking up a slider object to the output of my MIDI routing setup, I could already see that my slide pot is sending MIDI CC-0 (0-127). Now that I know it's working, I open up the EoMessage patch downloaded from Eowave to play around with some of the settings. This patch provides a simple interface for changing the behavior of each analog input. The first thing I wanted to check out was the 12-bit CC setting boasted about in the product documentation. Once I change this setting, I notice that my CC-0 is still acting the same, but now I'm also getting numbers coming through CC-64. According to the Eobody manual, this number is the 5 "Least Significant Bits (LSB)" of the analog-to-digital conversion, which are normally discarded for the standard 7-bit MIDI CC message. Combining these two numbers together will extend the precision of the analog input to a 12-bit 0-4095 range instead of 0-127. To do this, all we need to do is left-shift our CC-0 number 5 places and add the CC-64 value. In addition to the regular and 12-bit CC, you can also use analog inputs as any other standard MIDI message.

By the time I finished hooking up all the electronic components and sorting it out in Max, I hadn't even been at it for an hour. No hassles with firmware programming, no weird interfacing hardware, and no need for third-party Max externals or editing software (the Eobody editor is a Max patch, of course) meant I could focus on the important stuff - writing my Max patch and thinking about how I'm going to control it. While it might not water your plants or check your email for you, the Eobody OEM board does allow you to quickly get lots of sensor data into Max with minimal effort. The no-frills, bare PCB package and basic header-pin interface also gives you the freedom to design your own custom project enclosure and use interface hardware that is specific to your own needs. The Eobody USB OEM board provides the flexibility and small footprint of a DIY controller interface combined with the simplicity and robust DSP of the Eobody product line.

making-connections-the-eobody-usb-oem-board

Hi Andrew, I've bought a Eobody USB OEM Board in 2009. Now I can't find in my hard disks the manual and the max patch. Do you have it? Can you help me? Thank, marco.

Making Connections: The Eobody USB OEM Board

Marsha Vdovin

These days it seems that everyone wants to be an artist so I found it refreshing to meet someone who see himself as an engineer that wanted to create tools for artists. Mattijs Kneppers spoke to me by phone from his home in Holland.

I wanted to start by talking about your childhood. I assume you grew up in Holland.

Not entirely. I grew up in Africa, until I was 10 years old, in Nigeria. It was pretty cool, I liked it, and I still like it, actually. Then I moved back.

No, actually, I went to a real African school. So it was like the white kid among the black guys.

Do you think that had a big impact on who you are?

I'm quite sure it has. Especially the fact that I had to adapt. I went there when I was four, so I had to adapt from a Dutch culture to the African culture, and then when I went back, there was the same process. So I learned to adapt. I think that's something I have learned from that period.

Were you interested in technology or art when you were a kid?

It started when I got back to Holland, actually. Because there were no computers, we didn't even have a TV, in Nigeria. So yeah, I was interested. I started making electronic music when I was about fourteen years old.

What were your first experiences doing electronic music like?

I'd been working with Fast Tracker a lot. That's a program, like an electronic music program, actually more like a sampler. I really loved working with Fast Tracker, although there were no synthesizers in there, which was the major limitation. Then I moved on to Buzz Tracker. Same principle, but with synthesizers, and also a modular studio concept. I really loved that piece of gear, and I have been using it for a long time to make electronic music. I got pretty involved in that scene, it was a real community. I managed the manual for the program and I set up some stuff there… until the creator of that program had a hard disk crash, and lost all his source code. Everyone in the scene was completely stunned, from that moment, it just stopped. People stopped using the program because there were still quite some bugs, it was still not finished. -I still used it for quite some time after that, but then there was no progress, so I stopped using it. That's pretty much when I stopped making music, actually.

Opera singer Daniela Bernoulli in a trio with two sonsor-controlled morphing 3D shapes in the theatre play 'Verknipt'. Technology by Mattijs, using Jitter (2005).

Well, after using this program, Buzz Tracker, I was looking for other programs to make electronic music in but I was so disappointed with all the tools that were out there… I tried everything.

I think that was around, 2001, something like that.

So you were really disappointed with what was out there?

Definitely, Absolutely. Cubase, Logic, and everything else. There were so many bugs, there were unintuitive interfaces. When I have an idea for music, I already hear it in my head, and then I need a tool that I can use to make that exact sound, to have this exact emotion, to translate it. That's contrary to a lot of people; they just start jamming, and create something on the fly. That's the difference, which makes it hard for me to comply with a tool that is not doing exactly what I want it to do. So that's why I pretty much stopped making music. Then, I had a dream to make my own software. [Laughs.] Although I was aware that programs like Cubase or Logic--well, there are a lot of people working on that stuff, so to do that alone is quite a challenge. But I'm still working on that. I've been working on some ideas for a couple of years now, in my free time. One day it will be finished, and I will start making music again. [Laughs.]

Yes, but I stopped, I quit my college after three years, because it was much too boring.

What did you study? Computers, engineering…?

I did study electrical engineering, a lot of differential equations about magnetic fields. Also programming, pretty general technical stuff, actually. Then I quit that. In Holland they have two different kinds of college. There's the university, and there's like one level easier, and more practical. I don't know if there's a distinction in the U.S. but that's a Bachelor's degree. So I was first going for a Master's degree, and then I stopped doing that, went to a different school, and started a Bachelor's degree--which I did get--It was pretty smooth, I didn’t spend much time on it. So I had a lot of time to do my own stuff in that period.

When did you start working with Max/MSP, and Jitter?

I started working on it, I think about three years ago.

You've done a lot in a short period of time.

I must say, I have been working with Max more than full time for three years.

The Dutch Metropole Orchestra with real-time 3D graphics, Mattijs (left) supervises technology, right: VJ Carlo Zoratti (2006)

First I tried to use Reaktor, the Native Instruments modular program that looks a bit like Max. At the time it was pretty much a dream for me, that came true. I thought, well, I don't want to program all this core stuff that's trivial in a way, I just want to make music tools, and well, if they program all the basics for me, well cool. But I was using Reaktor 4 by that time, and it was so buggy, and I spent a lot of the time with bug reports. They really didn't fix anything, nothing really evolved. So that's when I got stuck, and I just stopped using it. So I started looking for alternatives, and heard about Max/MSP…

Did you just jump in? Did you take to Max right away?

I caught up with a few people that were already using Max, so they showed me some stuff, the first things you need. Then I did the tutorials, of course, most of them. The advantage was that I was used to being auto-didactical, when you learn yourself. I was used to learning on my own, without books and without much help from others. That's the way I learn stuff in general.. So yes, it went pretty fast, though. I had a software engineering background, so it was easier for me to understand the threading background, and the way the event processing works. When you know what happens inside the externals, then you have a nice jump-start.

You've made a number of your own Max objects that you give away to people.

That's correct. There are two or three things, I think that are online on my user page right now. One is a collection of externals that I made together with John Pitcairn, a guy from New Zealand. I really enjoy working together.

A screen shot of the help file of the oo objects v0.40, made by John Pitcairn and Mattijs Kneppers.

Why are you sharing these objects, as opposed to keeping them exclusive to yourself? What's your philosophy behind that?

I believe that Max is a programming language, not just a tool to make smaller installations, or single performances, but really a full-blown programming language. I think there's a lot of future in that. I really hope that one day it will be a full equivalent of a common programming language. I was missing the concept of scope in Max, as far as wireless connections were concerned. I really ran into that, and it really limited me. Besides I think this is a way of giving back something to the community, because there's been so many people that have been helping me throughout these years, and I really would like to give something back. That's a big thing, and that's a big thing for John, too. That's where we found each other.

But then there is this thing that I really would like to show people, that Max can be an actual program language. I actually believe this can be a next-generation programming language, like the visual equivalent of text-based languages. I'm already using it that way… although there are still some limitations.

These ones we wrote in C, we used the SDK that Cycling provides. I do a lot of Java programming as well, but not on Max. I'm working on my own sequencer actually, but it's not available to the public yet, so it's not that much of an issue.

I noticed you were really involved in the MAX forum, asking questions, exchanging information. Has that been useful to you?

Oh yes, definitely. I mean, without the forum…

Are you learning more from other Max users? Are you learning a lot from programmers at Cycling '74?

Both, definitely. I really like when I have questions that I know are pretty deep, are not common, that I can be sure that developers from Cycling '74 will read the forum and will answer my questions. That's the most assuring thing about the community, which is one of the big reasons why I use Max, actually.

I want to ask you about your statement that you're ‘not an artist, you're a technician’. Isn't what you're doing art? Wasn’t Stradivarius an artist, even though he was making instruments?

Well, I think someone who makes tools--and that's a nice way of putting it by the way--is proud mostly of their skills in making a good piece of equipment. Apart from that, I think it's definitely an art form as well. I really take pride in making good tools, and understanding people that have a concept and translating that concept into a real, working scenario. That's what I really like.

Are you ever working with an artist, and feel like you want to be more involved on the artist level?

Well, it definitely inspires me. My main form of ‘real’ art is electronic music though, the stuff I had been doing when I was kid. But I really enjoy other people who can have such amazing ideas. I like that as much as, or more than, being an artist myself at this point.

That's an important statement, really…. what you're ‘enjoying’.

Yeah, I think so. Apart from that, there's the electronic music part as well. I really like to make electronic music myself, but as I said, at the moment I don't have the right tools, so I'll keep programming those, and when I finish my tools, then I'll start making music again. But for now, I do the technological part. I really enjoy the way other people come up with concepts and ideas. I really like hanging out with artists, talking with artists is always so much more inspiring than with people who are in business, or technology. [Laughs.]

You've had a long collaboration with Eboman?

Yes, that's correct. I'm a freelancer, I just do jobs for any artist that has a project, but Eboman is my biggest customer, by far, at this point. We’re also starting up this company, 

Eboman using SenS IV to create a real-time video sampling track on the Dutch Lowlands festival, exclusively with samples of the audience.

SmadSteck, that’s your visual sampler. You're doing that with Eboman?

Video sampling track 'Copy n toothpaSte', made in one day with SenS IV, performed at the Milano film festival 2007.

Do you have any favorite objects, or favorite things you like to do with Jitter?

Jitter, well, I really love the potential of shaders. So right now I’m totally into shaders.

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