Sensors

What is the background “noise” in the sensors of a mobile phone? In the fourMs Lab, we have a tradition of testing the noise levels of various devices. Over the last few years, we have been using mobile phones in multiple experiments, including the MusicLab app that has been used in public research concerts, such as MusicLab Copenhagen. I have yet to conduct a systematic study of many mobile phones lying still, but today I tried recording my phone—a Samsung Galaxy Ultra S21—lying still on the table for ten minutes....

I am involved in a student project which uses some Arduino Mega 2560 sensor interfaces in an interactive device. It has been a while since I worked with Arduinos myself, as I am mainly working with Belas these days. Also, I have never worked with the Mega before, so I had to look around a little to figure out how to set it up with Cycling ‘74’s Max. I have previously used Maxuino for interfacing Arduinos with Max....

micro-OSC (uOSC) was made public yesterday at NIME: micro-OSC (uOSC) is a firmware runtime system for embedded platforms designed to remain as small as possible while also supporting evolving trends in sensor interfaces such as regulated 3.3 Volt high-resolution sensors, mixed analog and digital multi-rate sensor interfacing, n > 8-bit data formats. uOSC supports the Open Sound Control protocol directly on the microprocessor, and the completeness of this implementation serves as a functional reference platform for research and development of the OSC protocol....

Another post from the Mobile Music Workshop in Vienna. Yesterday I saw a demo on the Audioscape project by Mike Wozniewski (McGill). He was using the Gumstix, a really small system running a Linux version called OpenEmbedded. He was running PDa (a Pure Data clone) and was able to process sensor data and run audio off of the small device.

Came across a student project from Cornell on doing motion capture using accelerometers, based on the Atmel controller. It is a nice overview of many of the challenges faced when working with accelerometers, and the implementation seems to work well. {width=“300/”}

The web page for our new research project called Sensing Music-related Actions is now up and running. This is a joint research project of the departments of Musicology and Informatics, and has received external funding through the VERDIKT program of the The Research Council of Norway. The project runs from July 2008 until July 2011. The focus of the project will be on basic issues of sensing and analysing music-related actions, and creating various prototypes for testing the control possibilities of such actions in enactive devices....

Bug Labs has announced a new open source, Lego-like computer modules running Linux. The idea is to create hardware that can easily be assembled in various ways. Looks neat! {#p503 .imagelink}

The new Doepfer USB64 Info looks very interesting with its 64 analog (or digital) inputs and €125 price tag. I am not so excited about the MIDI plug, and wonder whether they intend to communicate some higher resolution data through the USB plug. {width=“602” height=“162”}

I have been preparing for Forskningstorget, an annual science fair in the city centre of Oslo, the last couple of days. Last year we made a Music Troll, and this year we are making a giant music ball for people to play with. The ball is built from a huge boat buoy, 120 cm in diameter, made for tank boats and stormy weather. This makes it just perfect for a music installation which is supposed to survive some thousand children over the next couple of days…...

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I am thrilled by the fact that various sensing technologies are getting so cheap that they are incorporated everywhere. As could be seen from the presentation of Apple’s new iPhone, it includes an accelerometer to sense tilt of the device (and also movement if they decide to use that for anything), a proximity sensor (ultrasound?) to turn off the display when the phone is put to the ear and a light sensor to change the brightness of the screen (?...