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QC SENSOR Hi all, i'm planning to use sensors for some upcoming installation (piezo, IR distance, proximity...). I was wondering if there was any sensors working with QC out of the box, without needing a Kineme patch to be coded. What you guys would recommend ? Ultimately, a sensor box that works both with QC and MaxMSP would be overkill --- I remember the phidget patch (monstruous) that smokris coded at the old fdiv site. Does it still work ? Are the phidgets usefull and nice to work with ?
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The phidget patches have not been updated for Leopard, but that shouldn't be too difficult, assuming that the phidget libraries are up to speed for 10.5.
Other than that, I'm not aware of any sensors that work through HID or OSC; I'm not well versed in sensor stuff though, so I may be mistaken, but those seem like the only promising technologies built into QC for getting data from the outside world.
http://makingthings.com/products/KIT-MAKE-CTRL
8 analog inputs, 8 digital outputs, 4 servo controllers. Supports OSC. $150.00 USD.
(Though I still like the Phidgets very much, the MCK's native OSC support might be better for your needs if you want to stay away from custom patches.)
Why don't you use Arduino with the kineme serial patch? You can connect any sensor to Arduino and pass the info to QC, you can even go wireless using xbee. I posted a little video demo of the serial commands with Arduino and xbee here:
http://vimeo.com/444458
thanks for the video , alex. I was originally thinking about using an Arduino, as they are quite cheap and a lot of ppl. are using it. However, my main goal is to interface with sensors, and not actually spend hours trying to know how to send ASCII string through the emulated serial port (you know what i mean). After some browsing, it just seems that the Make controller is super great because, apart from having an emulated serial port through USB, like Arduinos or some board soldered PICs, it has OSC support via ethernet, which i think can allow me to be safe in almost every situation. However, i'll have a further look at the Arduino possibilities (Make is built with ATMEL). Please keep me posted if you got a roaming QC-Arduino patch under the hood. Are you using the USB adapter ? : http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/MiniUSB What sensor vendor would you recommend ?
http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardDiecimila
to clarify - no i haven't used one, but was looking into it recently - built in ethernet+osc seems a huge win for the make board - great work alex
arduino is sooooo cheap (compared to the make controller) that i just ordered one.... still planning to get a make one tho'
Dear Fransz,
All these boards will be helpful to interface the sensors you mention. Depending on your interests however one board will be more suitable then another. Another system that could prove useful is BlueSense which is built by Blue Melon (I am one of the BlueSense developers).
To use it with QC you would need an OSC interface. This could be accomplished by connecting the BlueSense modules to our BluePD embedded Pure Data device.
Please have a look at our website for more info:
http://www.bluemelon.org/index.php/Main_page/BlueSense
Dinne
thanks for the info. I didn't know about your interface... it seems very promising. Can it really load PD files and run them standalone ? This sounds so uber-real ....
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