Seems like the Arduino community is growing quickly. Arduino is an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple i/o board, and a development environment for writing Arduino software. The Arduino programming language is an implementation of Wiring, itself built on Processing. At the moment I am very happy with the Phidgets interfacekits for my electronics work, but as soon as I am done with my dissertation I will get into the Arduino/Wiring/Processing world....
Just back from the 1st Nordic Music Technology Conference organized by NTNU in connection with Trondheim MatchMaking organized by TEKS. This is the follow-up conference from Musikkteknologidagene which I organized in Oslo last year as an attempt to gather people working within the field. Ola Nordahl has posted some nice pictures from the Opening day, where Paul Lansky held a great keynote about his compositions (check out his music page for examples of his work)....
A group of German students are working on a project called Stekgreif where they include a number of popular sensors built as lego-blocks. Adding power through the lego bricks makes it possible to build instruments and other fun things entirely out of lego.
{#image292}Nick Rothwell reviews the Gypsy MIDI controller in Sound on Sound. An excerpt from his conclusion: I know some artists who could build great live performances around a Gypsy MIDI suit, and others who would merely look like plonkers. As to the first question, here at Cassiel Central we’ve been through all manner of MIDI controllers and sensing systems, from fader boxes (motorised and not) through accelerometers, ultrasound systems, camera tracking, joysticks, game controllers and Buchla devices, and some common issues emerge....
Last weekend we participated (again) with a stand at a big science fair down in the city centre of Oslo during the Norwegian Research Days. {.imagelink} The most interesting thing, and also what I have spent the most time on lately was a “music troll” I have been making together with Einar Sneve Martinussen and Arve Voldsund. The troll is basically a box with four speakers on the sides, and four arms sticking out with heads with included sensors....
Nokia 5500 is a new sport phone with a built in pedometer and the ability to use gestures (well, only tapping so far) for controlling music playback. As accelerometers get cheaper I expect to see lots of new gesture-controlled devices.
{#image275}Philips Research is currently showing off a their new Photonic Textiles at the IFA Consumer Electronics Fair in Berlin. The Photonic Fabric integrates flexible arrays of multicolored LEDs into the weave, allowing the fabric to give off light and display programmable patterns like text messages, without compromising the softness of the cloth. Philips’ Photonic Textile Prototypes include an “SMS pillow” and an “SMS Backpack” (send a text message to it and words scroll across it)....
As part of the Musikkball project, we are making a “music ball troll” for the science fair Forskningstorget in Oslo next week. I have been looking for a solution to make the setup as self-contained as possible, and this includes building a Mac mini into the speaker box founding the base of the “troll”. What is great with the mini is that it is possible to run it headless (without any attached mouse, keyboard and monitor), and control it using Chicken of the VNC from my MacBook....
Steven Berlin Johnson has an interesting blog entry on his use of DevonThink Pro: Over the past few years of working with this approach, I’ve learned a few key principles. The system works for three reasons: 1) The DevonThink software does a great job at making semantic connections between documents based on word frequency. 2) I have pre-filtered the results by selecting quotes that interest me, and by archiving my own prose....
Firefox Scholar is a set of extensions to the popular open source web browser that will: - Recognize and capture metadata from online objects (e.g., author, title, publication information of books) Collect documents, images, and citations from the web Allow materials to be sorted, annotated, and searched The program will be free and will replace programs like EndNote, while operating completely within the browser window. A beta of Firefox Scholar will be available in the summer of 2006....