Kinect/ Max/ Isadora/ Arduino..

[duncanparsons]

couldn't think of the best place to put this, so opted for OT..

I have a friend doing a practise-based PhD in interactive dance/theatre and she has plans to make use of Kinect->Max->Isadora. She's done a workshop with a chap that went OK, but being more artistically than technically minded she has worries, some of which I'm doing my best to allay.

Looking at the Max patches she's got, they have a dependency on an OSC-route object. I have found the CNMAT objects & downloaded what claimed to be a Universal Binary/Mach-O package, but looks little like how I expected. Anyone know anything about how that should be installed? The Readme file has expectations of the user greater than my knowledge allows for, just telling me to place the *.class files somewhere - but I saw no change from doing this.. would I have missed something, do other files need to be places anywhere/referenced?

There's also a possibility of using some pressure pads as an input via some Arduino interface to Max->Isadora - have any of you had any experience of this kind of thing? Are there any recommendations/warnings, and are there makes of pressure surfaces that are better than others?

She has a CS MPhil on board to help out with Kinect stuff; I'm meeting her on Weds (8th) - my current assumption is that she will have found something of the libraries that are around. Anyone got any tips of what might be pertinent questions to ask? So far as I can see the patches my friend has been sent rely on Max getting UDP packets on port 7110 from a Kinect driver of some sort, processing them & passing a new datagram to Isadora on port 4000. Does that sound reasonable to expect Kinect to work that way?

Any comments welcomed
DSP

[trimph1]

This could have been placed in the DIY section of the forum.

Having said that I think that it might work in the way you mentioned but having really no experience with the Kinect myself I'd be wondering how that would work as well

[Meffy]

Send me a PM if you want it moved to DIY. I'm going to be busy today, unable to check in as often as I'd like to.

[skitchy]

Check out Procssing
http://processing.org/reference/libraries/
and Openkinect
http://www.shiffman.net/p5/kinect/

[whyterabbyt]

No direct experience with Kinekt or Isadora, and Im less familiar with what options are available for the OSX version of MAX/MSP, but I'll chip in my ha'penceworth.

I have a friend doing a practise-based PhD in interactive dance/theatre and she has plans to make use of Kinect->Max->Isadora. She's done a workshop with a chap that went OK, but being more artistically than technically minded she has worries, some of which I'm doing my best to allay.

Basic question : Is there a specific need for MAX/MSP in the first place? From a quick look at the Isadora forum it would seem that there are already Kinekt-based projects ongoing, so if its only being used for data translation that might be streamlineable to a simpler Kinekt->Isadora setup.

Looking at the Max patches she's got, they have a dependency on an OSC-route object. I have found the CNMAT objects & downloaded what claimed to be a Universal Binary/Mach-O package, but looks little like how I expected. Anyone know anything about how that should be installed? The Readme file has expectations of the user greater than my knowledge allows for, just telling me to place the *.class files somewhere - but I saw no change from doing this.. would I have missed something, do other files need to be places anywhere/referenced?

Bit confused by that; MAX objects shouldnt include .class files, AFAIK. Compiled MAX objects should be .mxo's on OSX I think (and .mxe on windows).

Ive downloaded the OSC-route object from
http://cnmat.berkeley.edu/downloads

and dont see any .class files in there, just a .mxo folder and a .help.pat patch in the zip file.

No readme either. I had a look at the massive CNMAT 'everything' .zip and that had some .class files in it, is that what you picked up?

On windows, I'd just drop the standalone OSC stuff into a folder in the directory

<installfolder>/Cycling '74/

and MAX should pick them up.
There might not be 'evidence' of it doing so until you open MAX and try and create a instance of the relevant object, though.

I'm not quite sure where they are on the Mac, maybe in a similar place in the application folder?

Opening the .help.pat file from within MAX should run a patch which contains help information and may even be a running example.

There's also a possibility of using some pressure pads as an input via some Arduino interface to Max->Isadora - have any of you had any experience of this kind of thing? Are there any recommendations/warnings, and are there makes of pressure surfaces that are better than others?

Again no firsthand experience, but I reckon every bloody thing under the sun has been hooked up to an Arduino by now. I'd take a look at Sparkfun's website and see what kind of sensors they do.

Again, you could probably sidestep MAX/MSP if you had to; there's mention of Arduino->Isadora projects in their forum. One simple suggestion I saw was to get the Arduino to output MIDI which Isadora should be able to handle easily.

She has a CS MPhil on board to help out with Kinect stuff; I'm meeting her on Weds (8th) - my current assumption is that she will have found something of the libraries that are around. Anyone got any tips of what might be pertinent questions to ask? So far as I can see the patches my friend has been sent rely on Max getting UDP packets on port 7110 from a Kinect driver of some sort, processing them & passing a new datagram to Isadora on port 4000. Does that sound reasonable to expect Kinect to work that way?

Sounds about right, I think. Although, as I say, you can possibly skip using MAX as a bridge if its not doing anything else.

[whyterabbyt]

no help to you?

[duncanparsons]

Hi, sorry just got back to that. Fantastic reply, mate, really appreciate it.

I had the meeting with my friend & the MPhil student. Looking at it all again more closely I got the feeling that the whole Max thing she'd got hold of was simply because the bloke who showed her already used that & he didn't know a better way of solving the problem. Came across bit like when people use Excel as a database only because it's a tool they can work rather than what's best.

The MPhil seems fairly switched on and said the sorts of things I hoped she might say. My hope is that Max can just be dropped - I was feeling a little uncomfortable by this extra bulk in the signal flow; so I'm glad that you're suggesting similar things.

wrt download, yes I thing I probably did get the 'everything' zip - I didn't have a lot of time & possibly didn't read the links properly. I pressed what I thought was a link to an OSX UB, and was surprised with what I got. I'll put it down to a Señor moment..

I'll try & catch up with Rosie (my friend) in the coming days to see where she's up to. I'll point both of them at the sparkfun site too.

thx again

[whyterabbyt]

No problem, glad it was of some use.

BTW, although it would muddy the water somewhat for your friend's project, anyone interested in vison-based interactive multimedia gestural recognition/control buzzword stuff via Kinect on Windows could maybe look at EyesWeb, which now has built-in Kinekt support.

http://createdigitalmotion.com/2011/06/ ... ixes-more/