Cannons in the Hall

So, most recently (January 2012), I got another new job, and this one even larger than the last!  I work at Grand Valley State University now, as their Equipment and Stage Manager for their Music and Dance department.  I have helped in a number of projects so far, but this one is of particular significance for this blog:

So, to kick off their Fall Arts celebration (tomorrow night), they are doing a number of Beethoven pieces.  My task has been to make sure everybody fits on stage, and that the lights and mic work.  Additionally, I get to make the cannon sounds happen for their performance of Wellington's Victory.  Rather, I built a rig, and my friend (the timpanist) is physically making them happen, according to the Cannon part he is reading from.  Sweet.

I'm low on time tonight, so I'll keep it simple.  It is two kick-pedal drum triggers hooked up to a Jeenode (with a pull down resistor so that each pedal acts like a big, fast potentiometer).  That Jeenode talks to another Jeenode connected to my computer, running a little Pd patch that plays the cannon sounds through speakers I put up in the back of the hall.  If you're in the Grand Rapids/Allendale area, check out the show tomorrow night (9/10/2012 8pm Louis Armstrong Theater, GVSU Campus in Allendale, MI) and hear it live (with the excellent musical talent Grand Rapids and GVSU have to offer).

Here's a pic:

Talk about low-profile!  Next, I want to work in some velocity sensitivity, so I can really use it in my own setup.  See you!

Birdie Installation

I haven't come up with a name for it yet, but I'm putting together an interactive video installation for the Lansing Media Theater Project (which may or may not have a new title these days).   Professor Alison Dobbins gave me a prompt of making something with Boids, and I thought she was spelling it funny.  Turns out, it's a flocking thing, and Processing has a demo patch built into its examples.  I was up super early today, so I made a pretty solid start to the whole thing.  Here's what happens:

1. Birds fly on the screen
1. They flock using this Boids stuff
1. Each bird is an instance of the Boid class, called by the Flock class, which is started in the main patch
2. They flap!
1. actually, it's just a picture of a bird that is alternately squished and not squished. :)
2. Three ways to interact with the birds so far
1. Whistle a descending third, and a new bird is born
1. Pure Data and Processing are talking over Open Sound Control, and Pd listens for a note in whistling range, then waits for a note somewhere between 2 and 5 half-steps lower.  If it hears it, it tells Processing to make a new bird/Boid
2. There is also a tweet sound :)
2. Make a noise too loud, and the birds go away for a while all flustered
1. There's a decibel threshold in Pd that, when crossed, tells Processing that the birds are "scared" and the boundaries of the screen are removed, allowing the birds to disappear
2. You also hear a fluttering sound, as the general bird noise loop fades out
3. Wave something green in front of the camera, and you can herd the birds on the screen.
1. There is a grid made out of groups of the pixels from the camera.
2. Each group is checked to see if it is mostly green
3. If it is, it is recorded in an ArrayList
4. Then, a function checks how far the elements in the ArrayList go left, right, up and down, and draws a box around the whole thing (drawn as an ellipse on the screen).
5. That box is now an object that the birds avoid.

As I learn more about capturing video from my screen, I'll post more detailed things with pictures and such.  Here's one!

First Show!

So, I had my first gig!  This is a short update, and you can see my set here on vimeo.  Thanks to Wisaal, The Anatomy of Frank and Tim Lane at Scene Metrospace.  More Soon!

qlist!

[qlist] is a Pd object that I haven't tried before, and it will do exactly what I need (I hope and assume, as the help file has assured me as such).

Instead of "looping," I'm going to record a series of events in this [qlist] object, and establish that that is a thing, a duration of time, a measure, or whatever.  It's not playing back audio, but more like making a little MIDI file, and playing it back, but without the crappy sound baggage.  What I mean to say is that I'm recording the relative timing between me pressing this pedal, turning this knob, and saying this thing, and it will remember and repeat (and repeat and repeat if I want).

Let's see if it works!

My Girls with an accelerometer

Last week, I finally got to play with an accelerometer for the first time. This accelerometer will tell the system when it's upright, and help it balance, or at least that's the plan. I need to spend more time with it, and with sequencing the reading and writing from the accelerometer and to the motor transistors, but so far I had some fun rigging it up with a Pd patch, using the new USB BUB board and latest BareBonesBoard, both from moderndevice.com.
ps. - I'm glad the USB BUB board exists now, for a nice easy way to get the USB connectivity I like for Arduino-Pd stuff, using a cable people could buy off the shelf, not like the old solution for BBBs, a TTY USB adapting cable that was sort of expensive and easy to hook up backwards.

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Anyway, this video is what I did. Thanks for the code:
http://antipastohw.blogspot.com/2007/12/arduino-with-radio-shack-parallax.html
I changed it a little to give Pd messages I'm used to working with (I'm sure there are better ways to send this information serially, but this seems fast enough) and rigged it up to control the volume and playback speed of a loop of Animal Collective's "My Girls." Fun Fun : )