Help to interface max msp with arduino!

Giuseppe's icon

Hi!
I'm product designer working on a project with Yamaha. We are having an exhibition at the Futuresonic in Manchester next week!
I desperately need help to make the prototype working!The project is a step sequancer that use that use light sensor to detect body movement!
I found a guy who will sort out the arduino part of it, and another who can figure out the max interface, what is missing now is the communication between the two software arduino and max!

Any one who can help me?

Please contact me as soon as possible for more details!

Thank you!

Giuseppe's icon

I forgot to say!

I'm in London!

Theformand's icon

Hello Giuseppe

Im working on the same thing for this semester and I found a solution, albeit im sure there are better and more stable ways of doing this. However if youre as desperate as you sound this could be a temp solution, but i wouldnt recommend it for a final revision.

I google'd Maxduino, which is developed by Firmata. Its a firmware for the Arduino that will send data to Max/Msp. Also, it contains 3 patches for Max/Msp, that will read serial data from the Arduino. For your project, you may wanna have your arduino/max guys work together on what data should be sent back and forth and redesign the firmware accordingly. Shouldnt take more than 2 hours.
You should be aware that this solution relies on virtual com ports, and they are flakey at best. Ive had alot of situations where I had to reload the entire thing 3-4 times just to be able to detect the Com port on which the Arduino was connected (usb, but virtual com port). Also, sometimes when the setup is working, all of the sudden a com port disappears. Its a bit jittery, but once you get the routine you should be fine.

Here is the link for the Maxduino Zip file containing Max patches and Arduino firmware

slatepipe's icon

hi

i have found that using arduino2max is really easy :

just make sure select the right com port in the drop down menu in the patch

Scott Fitzgerald's icon

If you have something more specialized than the SMS and Firmata type examples that limit your ability to use other ICs, you'll have to roll your own serial communication protocol. I posted something on serial communication between max and arduino the other month here and the next version of the Arduino IDE will have new examples of serial communication updated for Max 5. You can find them on google code :

(Apologies for the JSON formatted code in the examples, Tom thought it more important to show off the formatted Max text than the compressed)

mathieulesourd@yahoo.co.uk's icon

I am having some problems to connect arduino to max/msp.
I use arduino2max patch on XP. MAX detect well my port number (COM3 appears on the pull down menu) but doesn't let me connect to it - "specified port not available". I try to restart but still the same problems. Anyone had a similar problems ?

Thanks and regards.

Mathieu