Big Test Patch for iphone Apps: MSA Remote, Fantastick, TouchOSC, OSCemote

thanks for posting this. i am interested in this topic as well and testing out the different apps as well. have you tried MRMR ?
you can build your own interface with it. unfortunatelly i find it pretty slow in response.
i havent tried fantastik yet.
i found osctouch and msa to be the more responsive, although osctouch has no multitouch and i also haveto restart the iphone from time to time specially when i switch from one of these apps to another.
does anybody know if MRMR is still being developped ? it seemed very promising to me.

Alexandre wrote on Sun, 05 July 2009 01:48Hi,

I plan to use my 5 fingers moving on my ipod touch(or iphone) to control sound in max, while moving this ipod upside down in 3 directions, using the accelerometers to control the timber of my instruments, depending on the angles that the ipod will make to the ground. nice thoughts.. So I'm planing to use one of the 3 nice young iphone apps that are able to send the free multitouch coordinates from your 5 fingers simultaneously: MSA Remote, Fantastick, or OSCemote.

Well, until now, I'm only starting by testing the accelerometers data from these 3 apps (+ also from TouchOSC). One could think that they're all the same, but from one to another... it's like day and night, in term of sampling speed of accelerometers data and vertical resolution... The sound is only made from two brutal saw~, but at least you get the funny impression that your iphone is a living animal complaining when you move it. The best rendering, for now, is made with MSA Remote.

The attached Patch :

- Shows graphically data entry in max with 1 millisec precision in a scrolling lcd. (this was made at the beginning to test wacom data entry), and vertical precision in an other lcd.

- Works with the 4 iphones apps, you only have to set in its settings for each app : -> Output host : your IPv4 address that you will find in your computer settings, -> output port : 3333 , no Input used in this patch. (except for Fantastick, which is a bit more complicated, see below)

RESULTS :

***** MSA Remote *****

++ SAMPLES every 17 Millisec. (mean)
(but with one of 34 ms every 12 sample)
++ PRECISE vertical resolution (at least 10 bits)

***** Fantastick *****

++ Samples every 16 Millisec. (mean)
-- but resolution of... 8 bits only* !
Ok, true that the accelerometer of the ipod is not so precise, but, if you use my patch while simply putting the ipod on a table, face down, you'll really hear more trembling sound with Fantastick than with MSA Remote. (and see it in the "Data_from_ipod_apps" window)
-> big problems of data transmission : big lags when graphics are moving in max... i could finally resolve this by using a standalone for the data transmission !!? (see below explanation)
-- When moving the ipod suddenly, the latency seems bigger to me than with MSA Remote.(but it's hard to make an objective test for this)
+ With Fantastick you can draw what you want from max. (but my first impression is that the drawing is performing really slow)

***** TouchOSC *****

-- Samples every... 31 Millisec.
-- 8 bits only*.

***** OSCemote *****

-- Samples every... 35 Millisec. (and less when the ipod shows the acceleration view !)
-- 8 bits only*.
(weird: always sending same data 2 or 3 times)
-- other problem: multitouch is not in full screen on the ipod
++ i really like the useful design of the multitouch mode, with x&y lines, it looks more clear to me than the design of MSA Remote...

About the data transmission of Fantastick :

The data from Fantastick is not of the same format than the 3 other apps. In the example patch from jusu (the conceptor of Fantastick) he is using java objects net.udp.recv and net.udp.send to manage data. But when you use some speed moving graphics in max (for example in my patch), you get samples only every 50 Millisec., or less... and lags... I don't know where does this come from, i suspect strange java priority behaviors. I'd really like to know if there is a way too change these priority behaviors(I'm using java a lot), in order to listen to the object net.udp.recv as often as it can be with udpreceive, and then drawing in max in REAL LOW priority. Of course i tried to use udpreceive but i get some error messages : "OSC packet size (30) not a multiple of 4 bytes: dropping". i also tried with some OSC behaviors ([udpreceive 6661 symbol]), but then i feel lost with the [opensoundcontrol] object...)

So finally, i found a workaround by putting the java in/out stuff in a standalone, and then communicate between the standalone and the patch with udp max objects. I'm sure there must be a better solution, any idea ?

But as a standalone app is too big for this forum (2Mb maximum), you'll have to open "fantastick.maxpat", not in the MaxMSP application, but in the 'other' max application: the MaxMSP Runtime... then find settings of Fantastick down in the ipod settings, put your computer IPv4, out-Port:6661 and in-Port:6662, and then open the Fantastick app.)

Few Notes :

- Sometimes you have to restart the ipod app if it's not working.

- There is a precise position of the ipod in space where the patch is quiet but i don't tell you, let's find it..

- Using a standard internet router network, brings, in my case, some lag on the data every 10 seconds or less. Then i put a computer-to-computer network to avoid this.

(Also, except for TouchOSC, the ipod is going to sleep after 1 minute without touching the screen, unless you deactivate sleep-mode in the ipod settings. should be nice to get an option)

Thanks for your feedback on this test,

Also, before thinking which app is bad or good, note that they're all very young apps which may be subject to updates.

Alexandre

* ( by deduction : knowing extreme values from the accelerometer are -2.32 to +2.30,and seeing that, around zero, values are: -0.018169,0,+0.018169 -> then you get (2.30+2.32)/0.018169 => 256 = 2^8 )