Prodical’s Blog

The Auduino has been a great project to learn about Arduino hardware and software - and in the process find out a lot more about basic electronics and various components, prototyping, fabrication techniques and source suitable suppliers etc.

Even though the project is relatively simple I’ve done what I normally try to do – aside from getting fairly obsessive/compulsive – make something refined but within imitations. It’s intended as a ‘thank you’ for Dave Mee from Madlab who lent me this Arduino Starter Kit for an Arduino Workshop way back in February 2010.

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My SparkFun components arrived… taking 9 days from order in the US… but since I thought I’d build Dave Mee an Auduino as a thank you for lending me his Arduino kit I bought some additional 4.7k linear rotary pots, knobs and an audio jack socket from Maplin for an equitable £9.95 in the interim. They’re chunkier – but chassis fitting.

So I had a good day at Fablab Manchester on Friday…
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With my SparkFun components in the post I’ve been preparing for building my Auduino – researching the Google Group a bit more thoroughly and following up on some of the links… and it really does seem like an ideal ‘my first proper’ arduino project…

I think the demo video on Jesse’s Studio Blog post illustrates how much fun this could be…

So I’ve now collected a series of Auduino sketches that variously:

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I’m currently researching how to make and control sound with an Arduino as well as sourcing possible components for the mooted Monomatic Modular Music Box for the “Analogue is the new Digital” exhibition as part of AND Festival in October.

With a total budget of £400 solutions and parts need to be cheap & cheerful – yet do the job…

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It’s been a while since my last blog post – so this is an overdue round-up of what’s been keeping me busy.

It feels like I’ve been focusing on Processing to the exclusion of anything else for sometime… and not just my own creative development… but also all the time and energy I’ve been investing into InProcess:ing – the open forum for sharing creative coding and practice at Madlab.

Don’t get me wrong… I lurve Processing… but I think it’s time to take a bit of a breather and outline ideas and strategies to move forward with new opportunities and other creative ideas that have been bubbling on my back-burner for a while…

Themes include:

1. KiNoSeq – a kinetic nodal sequencer for the iPad
2. Fun with Arduino
3. PEAL ‘Hand Bells’
4. The Augmented Tonoscope
5. shado – monome widgets
6. Dirty Electronics – Skull Etching
7. ‘Analogue is the new Digital’ exhibition

Some of these are relatively brief and included within this post – others are more substantial so I’ve opened up a separate post in their own right.

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I spent a fairly busy couple of weeks working with Nick Rothwell on MonoScape - a Processing visualisation sketch and application for a monome64 to trigger and position sounds within the Illustrious’ 3D-AudioScape surround sound system. Details on the Monomatic blog.

With my monome 64 due to arrive imminently I’ve been browsing the monome website for sparkly things I particularly like the look of…

Starting with Ableton Live…

1. drumwreck by anton hornquist – website & youtube demo

monome step sequencer in maxmsp/live

Early days for this app… which seems both intuitive and ergonomic… and even works using the ‘monome40_fake’ patch. Latest developments on its monome discussion thread.

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Here’s a first draft outline as PDF - though it’s still waiting for feedback and contributions from Anthony Rowe.

There’s always more to find out there… Deep Vacuuming the Source Files and then looking fairly systematically through BIT-101 Lab has turned up several interesting Flash demos:

a sweet little non-interactive 3d particle system waveform – 041101_lewis.fla

Click on the image to load Flash in a pop up.

and a simple sound activated wave pattern – 050819_lewis.fla

Click on the image to load Flash in a pop up.

It also suggested some new and useful practitioner and reference links – though these have quickly branched out further still…

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A collaboration with Anthony Rowe of squidsoup – an ideal partner for this project – squidsoup’s work being focussed as it is on exploring minimalist, interactive, virtual visual and aural environments.

What are we trying to achieve?
Ultimately the aim would be to create a beautiful and musically responsive visualisation device and/or piece of programming that could be used by both TSP and squidsoup for live gigs and/or exhibitions.

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