Intro to Physical Computing w/ Max/MSP; help.
Hello all,
I have been using Max/MSP for a little while but I am just now getting into Physical Computing using Max/MSP. I was wondering...
1) Could anyone point me to any articles/websites/books about the basics of physical computing w/ Max?
2) What project board/chip do you suggest?
3) I want to do a project where several contact mics, a camera, and geophone/temperature sensors are giving data to Max and three standard clip lights react to the data, does this sound doable?
4) What are my options for dimming? (MIDI? hack a dimmer? don't need one at all?) [my goal is to put RGB gels over the three clip lights and control the brightness to create any color I want]
Thanks,
Hello,
FWIW, if you are interested in buiding your own interfaces and electronics, you will be well served by looking into Arduino or Make Controller Kit. Both are pretty affordable and have a great community with support and advice available, and interface readily with Max. For low-level chip solutions, I would strongly recommend using AVR instead of PIC - there is a GCC compiler (free), the programmers are cheap, and the toolchain is available for OS X (also free).
Best of luck,
Andrew B.
i think that tom igoe's Making Things Talk book is pretty much the
bible of this stuff at this point.
On Sep 16, 2008, at 1:46 AM, raja wrote:
>
> Yes, it's true, PIC programmers are definitely more expensive. I'll
> have to check out more Arduino stuff, I/O seems limited, though? or
> can you chain them easily?
>
> while looking into it, though, i found this, seems like a nice place
> to start:
> http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutorials.php
>
> anyone else have tutorial/book suggestions?
Hi,
As far as book suggestions go you might try 'Physical Computing' by Dan O'sullivan and Tom Igoe (that is, if you haven't already!)
While it's not entirely Max-focused (more on micro controllers and their applications/programming), it does have some useful bits and pieces and is generally good as an introduction to and in-depth study of the sort of projects you're outlining.
George
Thanks so much for all the replies.
I am going to try to get in touch with Brian Crabtree, being that we are both based in Philadelphia.
I will make sure I pick up the two Tom Igoe books.
Thank you all!
~TSG
At 4:43 AM -0600 9/14/08, Nick Snyder wrote:
>2) What project board/chip do you suggest?
If you want to avoid having to programming a micro on your first
project, check out MidiTron (http://miditron.com).
>3) I want to do a project where several contact mics,
Use an audio interface for the mics.
>a camera,
Use Cyclops, SoftVNS or one of the other camera input solutions.
>and geophone/temperature sensors
MidiTron or another CV-to-MIDI solution.
> are giving data to Max and three standard clip lights react to the
>data, does this sound doable?
>
>4) What are my options for dimming? (MIDI? hack a dimmer? don't need
>one at all?) [my goal is to put RGB gels over the three clip lights
>and control the brightness to create any color I want]
Buy an AC dimmer. MediaMation sells one. Making one is very difficult.
Eric