From the nr74website:

c74 is an iPhone / iPod Touch app that let’s you connect your device with Cycling ’74′s Max/MSP 5.

The massive improvement over existing interface layout apps is that the layout is dynamically controlled by Max. Therefore we can have the interface adapt to the tasks it has to perform in real-time.

In order to connect this app to Max please download the free external from : http://www.nr74.org/c74/c74.zip(requires osx 10.5 or higher !)

Custom controller interfaces are built straight from within Max, presets can be stored etc. The external features some nice attributes for receiving accelerometer, GPS, compass, shake gesture and proximity data.

Please note : the c74 app won’t run on 1st gen iPods

Please note : the c74 external requires osx 10.5 or higher

Looking forward to playing with this. Nice work n74!

Arduinome parts

Arduinome is a clone of the open source monome 40h which uses an arduino microcontroller.

Wikipedia says, “The monome is an eight-by-eight grid of backlit buttons which connects to a computer using a USB cable and the Open Sound Control (OSC) protocol. Originally developed as an open ended performance interface for electronic music, its developers have said “The wonderful thing about this device is that it doesn’t do anything really.” As a result, developers have begun to use the monome as an interface for other types of software, from text displays to games.”

Here is some video of vimeo user ro using a monome 256 running mlr and a monome 40h running vu_spec (part of the monome_base), which is an 8 band spectral display.

I am following the build instructions posted by Curious Inventor. I started soldering all the LEDs and diodes last night. In an hour and a half I got through all the LEDs and a quarter of the diodes. (there are 64 LEDs and 64 diodes) I think I should be able to finish the diodes tonight and get started on the unsped arduino shield.

I am waiting to hear back from machinecollective.org about when a case will be available to ship. The sooner the better. I can’t wait to use those blinky lights and soft buttons to mash things up with MaxMSP, Ableton Live and Max for Live.

DIY cardboard MIDI controller

I am planning on using this Arduino based prototype to experiment with fine tuning the firmware for a line of boutique and custom MIDI controllers. The final project will be ported to C using the AVR C library and I will make the whole project open source.

Here is a look at the back. I just used whatever pots I had, so they aren’t matched. The LCD is a serial one from SparkFun.

Underbelly of the cardboard MIDI controller

This driver is a virtual midi device that you can use to route MIDI to, through and from. My Max patch parses the serial data from the Arduino to the IAC Driver. By choosing the IAC Driver as a MIDI input in Live (or any other MIDI capable app) you can then use the serial MIDI CC data sent from the Arduino to control your software.

The MIDI data that the Max patch expects at the serial input is in the standard MIDI format for a CC message; a status byte, a control number and a value. This simple patch just listens for a status byte of 176 which is a control change on channel 1. The baud rate I chose for this patch was 57600. Note that you do not have to use the standard MIDI data rate of 31250 baud.

MIDI Devices

To enable the IAC Driver go to Applications->Utilities->Audio MIDI Setup, click on the MIDI Devices tab and then double click the IAC Driver icon make sure that the Device is online check box is checked.

To use this patch you need the MaxMSP Runtime. Once you have that installed open it up and then open the patch with it. Double click on the midiout object and select the IAC Driver. Then click the button at the top of the chain to start reading the serial port and parsing the data. You should now be able to use  midi learn to map your controllers and start tweaking stuff in realtime with your potentiometers.

Here is what the patch looks like:

Serial to MIDI Max patch

If you own Max just copy the following code and then paste it in a blank patcher.

----------begin_max5_patcher----------
488.3ocuVsrahCCEccxWwUdclQ9QdTlcUpa5h9ETUMxPLTOJwFkXTof5+9X6
.COFjvIjhDgHesu1m64dNIYabDZpdsnEA+BdEhh1FGE4C4BDsabDpludVEu0
uLjR7gd5ePIcSYDqM9vapf4xJinAHE46mUspVppDFelzCA0qLmGctVYT7Zge
ydrQxq1uIK4lYuKUK9ciXloCozT7OwI.kl4tkOwOvFBdaWNcGf4ykhtDPnD6
0+l1cXsxM9IITa1cgkk9S2Vd+ffbg9JN18WxsQMKajJC7xyO87E4ExE4E7P3
ER1I7B6+3kqW3ECovM5EKpD8n5HWs2xv6A+0ZsVx8Pm8nJgMhsvZgoQCY8PW
StAccgu8kQtdsOkqVzGYMcD4jVgqZ.NjUjiwvC.Av8PBbKFeRmtfPxCSdzSy
OaLc+0xRoETe2VeZpWtvRSc2RmL.qOCOxk8bcSM+xUdwnaZnO3cMDbeejQ.t
lIiIw3p.2KIAkx9a.OzbPNl77fYmd8dxrioFehnJo57OovCLW7S4qV8plY6O
1caWBb.ZkhViTwMRs53EcxZdWVVJTG6arRukZaKdGFf2tXyKXHE.hrBDKod2
fDKDLcFU9ciIZ.Phce6brP5b2WRZRHrD99puCwxUbCPxN3q3+JxEVKJ
-----------end_max5_patcher-----------

If you don’t own Max then you can download the patch here.

I will try and put together a more complete patch with user selectable options sometime soon.