#10

Ive not tried a Roli… but I have a Soundplane (which is smooth) and also had a go with a Continuum, and Id don’t think, Id agree with the comment on the continuum.
there are two sides, quantising is often used for initial touch (especially on percussive sounds), and then you do get used to playing ‘fretless’ (without quantising) with practice.
one other huge different on the continuum, is the amount of dynamics (with pressure) since its go so much more ‘give’ than other surfaces… this was actually the biggest difference i was aware, initially finding almost too much dynamics - though now, I really do want a continuum because of this (and its awesome eagan matrix!)

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#11

I definitely want to experiment with hall effect sensors. It’s something I have no direct experience with, and it seems pretty interesting. I’ve never played a Continuum, but it looks extremely responsive.

#12

yeah, im wondering what to try for sensors for building something with bbb+bela, so very interested in ideas surfacing here.
this was one of the reasons, processing overheads, Im currently running the touch tracker of the soundplane on a bbb+bela, and it does eat a large % of cpu available, which means sound generation would be compromised if you were to run both on the same box.

not a big concern for me, as Ive planned one BBB for controller processing, and separate BBB/Axolotis for synthesis and fx … the advantage of using fairly cheap micro-controllers, it becomes a modular approach :slight_smile:

#13

bbb+Bela is definitely going to be the platform upon which I will be experimenting with these ideas.

Absolutely open to the idea of using multiples (with the caveat that I can’t readily buy another Bela until a more general release!)

#14

Oh wow, I hadn’t heard about Sensel, but I will definitely be preordering one.

Re: touch/pad/images, it’s worth noting that the Linnstrument isn’t actually implemented as discrete pads-- it’s not a tabletop Eigenharp. Each row is continuous, so you can pitch-bend smoothly across the whole thing, and you can articulate up and down within a row regardless of where the touch originated, and regardless of where you’re gesturing. I was informed, however, that the rows are discrete in hardware, so it isn’t fully 3D in the way that the soundplane is. (I haven’t tested, but I’m guessing that you can’t bend two touches in the same row together and still distinguish y-axis movement between them, but maybe you can?)

Anyways, you will have to do some kind of blob detection, tracking, and separation if you roll your own. It’s non-trivial stuff for sure. At the cost of the Sensel, I’m personally happy to punt that hard work to them and figure out how to adapt it to my interests :slight_smile:

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#15

Actually reading that blog post instead of just looking at the pictures and pre sale cost, my gut reaction is “Oh! Touchco is back!”

Hopefully with amazon’s blessing

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#16

both linnstrument and soundplane allow bends of two touches in same row, whilst allowing Y axis movement.

sorry, your right, discrete pads was bad wording… as i understand it, there are sensor strips in rows/columns, the intersection of these forming cells. thats kind of what i meant, but yeah the strips are continuous so ‘discrete’ is probably misleading.

(there have been tidbits of discussion on the linnstrument kvr forum over time, which I kind of remember bits of it, and probably mis-remember other bits :wink: they are difficult to find as they are fragmented, and often embedded in other discussions…)

@jasonw22, you might find the following interesting, basically someone who describes how he believes (given characteristic/firmware) the linnstrument is constructed… regardless if its 100% accurate, its an interesting idea.

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#17

@thetechnobear that’s really excellent, thank you so much!

#18

I won’t try to say that DIY capacitive touch is easy, but you don’t need 16 channels of audio I/O. Randy’s prototype used 8 channels of I/O and is very impressive! Also, folks have used his DIY instructions with as little as the stereo headphone jack and stereo microphone jack of the typical laptop. That’s enough for 4 capacitive plates and pure interpolation to sense position and pressure up to the limits of the signal-to-noise and bit depth used.

Granted, if you want to build something as large as the Soundplane Model A, you’ll need more than stereo I/O. The Soundplane has a 64x8 grid using 32 output and 16 input channels, stacked.

Brian

#19

I’d rather not use Max and and audio interface for this. Would prefer a more permanent solution.

#20

Can’t argue with that. I merely wanted to point out that it’s easier than finding a 16-channel audio interface. But, yes, much better to spend less time building your instrument so you’ll have more time to play it.

#21

I mean, if I thought I had a better idea than Soundplane, Linnstrument, Continuum, Etouché, or Seaboard, that would be a different story. But I’m pretty sure I don’t.

#22

Bumping an old thread for an interesting announcement via the Max newsletter today.
I hadn’t paid any real attention to the Sensel Morph but the Max package for it has got me interested.
Seems like a reasonably priced way to get some great touch data for Max to use.

1 Like
#23

6 posts were split to a new topic: Dudes fsr box run

Moderation: merging + splitting topics
#28

wrong thread confusion

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#29

yeah that’s weird

we’ll look into it

#30

Has anyone here played around with making their own capacitive touch controller using the mpr121 and arduino? I have played around using adafruit’s library and almost have a simple Buchla style controller figured out. I’m just having a lot of trouble getting pressure right.

#31

I worked with BareConductive on PiCap (https://www.bareconductive.com/shop/pi-cap/) → here’s our mpr121 code: https://github.com/BareConductive/ — maybe it will be useful in some way?

#32

I’ll take a look at it. Thank you!

#33

I’ve been using the capacitive touch library on Arduino Playground, it’s been really easy for me to work with. https://playground.arduino.cc/Main/CapacitiveSensor?from=Main.CapSense

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