Anyone used a RPLIDAR in Max? Recommendations?

ygreq's icon

Hi folks!

I found this 2 relatively cheap devices.

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14117
https://www.seeedstudio.com/RPLIDAR-A2-The-Thinest-LIDAR-p-2687.html

I was wondering if you used one of these or other? Willing to share some experience? Patches?

Thank you!!
ygreq

konstantina mavridou's icon

Hello, I am trying to use in many different ways Rplidar A1. Did you find a patch back then?

best, thanks!
konstantina

ygreq's icon

Hey Konstantina!

I didn't find any info. I started creating my own. Didn't finish it as I abandoned the idea. I can send you the incomplete patch as soon as I find it.
What type of RPLIDAR are you using?

I bought a Scanse Sweep.

konstantina mavridou's icon

Hi, thanks for replying :) I use the RPLidar A1 360.
If you have it somewhere I would like to check it out. I am building an interactive installation (with a deadline :P). Currently reading the sensor data with JS at a local server , but I need to map combos of angle+distance into specific MIDI notes and route them to Ableton Live.
best
Konstantina

ygreq's icon

I don't know about A1, but RPLIDAR is sending hex data. So I was trying to interpret that. Like I said, I got stuck pretty early on. For now it only sends commands via the serial object. And I was working on interpreting data coming out of it

here goes..

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

mattyo's icon

There is a node.js library for rplidar A1: https://github.com/Awk34/node-rplidar
I haven't been able to get it running yet, due to some details in Node that are above my pay grade, but I'll post when I get it sorted out. Or if any Node geniuses out there want to beat me to the punch, feel free.

\M

ygreq's icon

I got a sweep scanse sensor so it might not work for me. But thank you nonetheless

konstantina mavridou's icon

Hello all,

We managed to build a node js app to send data to localhost using indeed the above node-rpLidar (https://github.com/Awk34/node-rplidar). There were some diffilulties between OS vs node modules used(especially for serialport & bit-buffer), due to the facts that: the node-rplidar was tested (as well as initial sdk) mainly for Win and not mac os , plus serialport & bit-buffer had several deprecations / incompatibilities.
In the end we managed to run it only on windows, with older versions of node / npm / seriaport (installed globally and from source) / bit-buffer (same as serialport).
The useful outputing data (which i ll use for my project ) are mainly: angle and distance. I wrote in the js script some cases to send OSC data under different pattern paths.
At the moment I am trying to find a good approach to read these OSC messages and map them into specific params in Ableton Live.
I am checking M4L devices, found a couple, but I still havent figured out how to do it.

Any ideas about the following devices, maybe ?

OSC TouchOSC and family of those
ParamGrabber and family of those

Also, I am checking the possibilities to convert somehow OSC to MIDI in ableton with a m4l device again:

osc - midi

but it doesnt see the incoming OSC msg.

Let me know if anybody knows them! I really appreciate it :)

best
Konstantina

mattyo's icon

Hm. Useful information, thanks! I had a feeling there were deprecation issues, but I didn't think there would be platform issues... Maybe the whole thing needs to be redone from scratch, bummer.

konstantina mavridou's icon

Indeed, a maintainable solution needs to be redesigned for this. :) If anybody needs info on this specific sensor, let me know.