Coming up with ways to get information about the physical world into Max is one of the most fun aspects of working with the software. Whether it is for video processing, sound creation, or any other type of output, physical interactions provide a space for much more interesting relationships to develop. Unfortunately, many ways to get this information into Max require the user to get comfortable with connecting wires to circuit boards and understanding basic (and sometimes not-so-basic) electronics. For this reason, camera-based interactivity can be pretty enticing. There is also a reasonably low startup cost and plugging a camera in is usually a pretty user-friendly process. In this article, I will share a couple of basic techniques for using affordable webcams to gather data in MaxMSP/Jitter.
