arduino

ATMEL ATmega8 based chips, programmable over usb, it costs about 25 euros (!)

has 8 digital ins and 4 analog ins so you can hook up all kinds of potentiometers, sensors,LCD screens etc

it has a very sleek programming enviroment,really fancy stuff , and you can interface it with maxmsp/puredata and even with flash or director

you can fit 'shields' on top - seperate pcbs that extend the ins and outs of the main arduino board, like this 6 fader board for example

i'm thinking of hooking up a few contact microphones to the arduino and using the contact mics as triggers for maxmsp, maybe adding some cheap

pressure sensitive sensors or motion sensor stuff, making a strange& powerful controller interface

*erection slowly builds*

man, near the end of my post it took up so much blood that i nearly fainted & forgot to post the url

Wouldn't you rather just use knobs?

  acid1 said:

Wouldn't you rather just use knobs?

I wouldn't.

  acid1 said:

Wouldn't you rather just use knobs?

the whole idea of this thing is that you can hook up whatever controller you want to use, so if you want to use a knob then sure hook it up:

you gotta tell the atmega chip how to handle to the knob:

int potPin = 2;    // select the input pin for the potentiometer
int ledPin = 13;   // select the pin for the LED
int val = 0;       // variable to store the value coming from the sensor

void setup() {
  pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);  // declare the ledPin as an OUTPUT
}

void loop() {
  val = analogRead(potPin);    // read the value from the sensor
  digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);  // turn the ledPin on
  delay(val);                  // stop the program for some time
  digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);   // turn the ledPin off
  delay(val);                  // stop the program for some time
}

or you can use accelerometers:

contact mics as triggers:

ultrasound/sonar-style range detectors:

& pressure sensitive stuff, pushbuttons, light-sensors, etc...

wtf nerds

amazing.

and cheap too

i wonder if you can use this programming environment to manipulate the data coming in from the potentiometers, and then have the result appear as a MIDI device in any music app, or if the data has to go directly into one of those specific programs you mentioned

i built an automated xylophone using one of these for an art installation

hooked it up to max/msp which outputed two set of dna sequences one for human and one for dog, two xylophone would then play themselves using the protein information outputed via this board to solenoids.

really cheap and the coding on it is a piece of piss.

oh this looks awesome.

*buys*

Once again iep proves to be the most awesome watmmer.