Hi there,
I would like to share a project I am working on for a while which might interest anyone who like making physically interactive or reactive installations.
It’s a plug-and-play sensing platform for creative and audiovisual applications, with MIDI, OSC, wireless capabilities and a convenient web interface.
You can turn movement, touch, distance, or other sensors into wireless controllers in seconds.

I developed this project to ease the connection of sensors to audiovisual and music software. After doing that with arduino for years, but encountering so many limitations and struggles, I decided to make and share a much easier, convenient and robust solution for all: the whole project will be open sourced.

The project is called “Pipo Interfaces”. It is still in the making and will be launched as a pre-order campaign on Crowd Supply (a funding platform for open source electronics).
If you are interested, check out the pre-launch page and subscribe to the project updates !

https://www.crowdsupply.com/pipo-interfaces/pipo

You can also check the Insta @pipo_interfaces
Any feedback or questions welcome !

Sorry just wasn’t sure if the images uploaded properly. Doing it from my iPhone so not used to how it looks

* Hi everyone 
I have searched around, I found any solutions that match my problem or are up-to-date unfortunately.

I’m having trouble unpacking and/Or routing the data coming in from sensors attached to my Arduino uno. The senses are working fine when I check the Arduino serial monitor before I began looking at the PD patch.

I just can’t seem to get them to unpack, or route in PD 0.5

Just wondering if anyone else has solved this - or has found this to be a problem?

Attached are images of two separate Arduino Scripps I’ve tried. One to try unpacking, the other to  try routing - Plus, an image of my pure data patch to try testing the incoming signal data.

![Arduino-Sensors Input-Unpack.png](/uploads/files/1729806028184-arduino-sensors-input-unpack.png) [sAp-Sensors Input Test.pd](/uploads/files/1729806028183-sap-sensors-input-test.pd) ![sAp-Sensors test-pd Image.png](/uploads/files/1729806028184-sap-sensors-test-pd-image.png) ![Arduino-Sensors Input-Route.png](/uploads/files/1729806028179-arduino-sensors-input-route.png) 

@lacuna said:

For me it is hard to know because information is missing:
This part I don't understand:

and also to trigger this sample as soon as there is something echoing the trigger at a distance inferior of 15cm using a Threshold~ object

but this works already, doesn't it?
In which condition you want the sample to stop?
What kind of sensor?
What is attached to pins 11 and 12?
What data does [adc~ 12] output when moving hand?
Is [print Distance (cm) : ] about correct?
Which Bela tutorial are you referring to?

[rzero~ 1] does some integration, I think. [dac~ 11] outputs ultrasonics? [line~] till 1000 and [adc~ 12] going into [samphold~] measures the time untill the reflected ultrasound is detected or sth like that?

Generally speaking, when developing something it is important to understand what is going on instead of blind copy&paste. And when asking, to provide all information you have to make it easy / possible to answer.

Hello, thanks for taking the time to answer my question, I really appreciate it; and sorry for having missed some important information.

This patch works as it will start playback when I put my hand on the sensor, but it won't stop playback when I remove my hand from the sensor range, and I'm still figuring out how to work this out. When I remove my hand the distance keeps going up, and thus the volume, until it reaches 25cm which is the limit I've put with [min25]. Your fade out patch makes sense but I still need something to bang it when I remove the hand from the sensor, putting a Threshold at 24cm for example kind of works, but it's not completely natural; imagine you're at 5cm and remove your hand, so the volume goes up to 24cm and then stops playback...

The sensor is the HC-SR04, pin 11 send triggers to ultrasonics every 60ms, echo receives feedback and sends it to pin 12, which with a time equation calculates distance. What [adc~ 12] outputs is a good question, I try to figure it out myself too, but it doesn't work with normal [print] command, not till it reaches [snapshot~] so then it outputs the distance in cm again. The distance is quite accurate, I think the real distance is a bit longer than the printed in console. The Bela tutorials are the official ones at https://learn.bela.io/tutorials/pure-data/sensors/distance-sensor/

What I've done at the moment is sample holding and snapshotting the distance so it stays in place, so if I want to "stop" the sample I just bring the distance near 0 with my hand very close bringing the volume near 0 and nearly unnoticeable, but the playback starts from the beginning with a [loadbang] is just that at any distance you'll put your hand the volume will go up. This works well in this case as the samples are standing notes, but it would be cooler if it starts from the beginning. I know there is some way to use this sensor as a trigger but I can't find any information.

@Aliam.Sigsaly the maintainer of pdlua is Albert Gräf. The way open source software works is that one person can use the code from other projects (provided the licenses are compatible). This is called a 'fork' and it doesn't imply that the original project is being 'taken over' or 'annexed' by the fork.

Afaik there are feature request github and discord forums/channels for plug data if you want to discuss the direction of the project (though I suppose this could also be an appropriate venue).

Imo your expectations for an announcement on arbitrary channels for a certain library version not being supported anymore are slightly unreasonable.. I would say that if you want to be informed of plug data or development about a certain version of ophelia there are places to follow in order to do so.

I also don't think it's productive to talk about how superior m4L is unless you're making specific feature suggestions for the project you want to use in a productive and collaborative way.

edit: also, a great thing about open source is that if you don't like the direction of a project you are free to make your own fork and add or remove whatever aspects you wish. The maintainers have a right to include or omit features and library for whatever reason though you are of course free to make criticisms or suggestions (though I have to say your tone did come across as somewhat entitled, rather than collaborative.. for instance you could enquire why something might not be maintained anymore before catastrophizing). But if you want a certain feature without doing the work to implement it that can come across as expecting free labor or agreement on aesthetics.

edit2: personally I disagree with alexandre's "everything in 1 lib" philosophy for else (personally I like using many different established libraries that already have equivalent objects) but he does work hard on it and those aspects have driven its adoption in plug data and many other projects. Also he probably (would have been) open to improvements for it in general if you considered them to be lacking and had made pull requests to improve it or at least given suggestions or feature requests instead of/before complaining..

I'm trying to get values from analog sensors connected to a raspberry pi pico. That pico is plugged into a rp5 where I want to read those sensor values in Pure Data. Question-- to interface the pico's sensor values with the Pure Data I can either

Use the pico as a keyboard HID device (using MicroPython on the pico, and "HID" object in Pure Data), or

Use the "comport" object in pure data to unpack and read the sensor values over serial.

Does anyone have any thoughts about either way? Limitations or resolution(if that even applies). Someone please correct any of this- I'm thinking the HID might be a bit friendlier, both pi's and an audio interface are going in a Disney princess guitar I got from goodwill eventually, but I'm trying to get it functional first. I see values in pure data using a Logitech USB game controller and the "HID" object, and about 10 years ago I got sensor values over serial with the "comport" object in Pure Data with an Arduino Nano v3.1. I was reading a little about the u2if git repository that might be another option...and Just found out about the teensy boards... was thinking the teenzy 4.0 might be a better option. But- I haven't gotten this working, so that's first. I appreciate this space!

@cfry The Mrpeach library, or the IEM library update has some basic HTTP objects too.
But I am not sure that it is the HTTP protocol that you want to use.
Looking at the first sentence on that page I think you could use midi..... https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aikaros-project%2Fikaros+midi&type=commits
or better still a socket using [netsend] as you first suggested.... https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Aikaros-project%2Fikaros+socket&type=commits
maybe specifically "Adding basic modules for socket communication"

The project has been running for a long time.... so there is a lot to read...!
Can a socket module use the same message strings as the web interface?
Probably.
David.

I'm not at the computer now, but I would proceed by steps.

Sensor = 1 play/resume, sensor 0 = stop. Get this very simple specification working first.

Then start the timer on sensor = 0 and be sure that the timer is counting correctly.

Btw I think you can simplify this using the pd [timer] object. Why? Because you need to know the elapsed time only when the sensor was 0 but becomes 1. So there is no need to poll the time continuously. Sensor 0, bang to timer's left inlet, sensor 1 to timer's right inlet.

Then:

• If the sensor goes to 0, the playback rate should change to 0 (pause).
• If the sensor goes to 1, the playback rate should change to 1 (play again).
• Note that these two behaviors do not depend on the timer at all!
• Then, also at the moment when the sensor becomes 1, if the timer shows a long enough period, then you would also send "all" to the left inlet.

hjh

I will check it late on my mac computer. for the moment I'm not on my computer, so I don't want to waste much time on it now as I think it will work on my computer.
For the moment I'm using your help file patch which is great. Your abstraction is so much more easy to use then from my patch I shared in the beginning.

what I'm trying to do is the following -
I will have 8 different sound files. Each sound file should be in a individual sf-play2~ object.
I will have data from 8 diffrent sensors I'm reading via arduino. Each sensor will report 0 or 1 (if sensor is pressed or not) alongside with analog data of numbers between 0 - 1023.
What I would like to do is that when I'm reading 1 the audio file will play, when reading 0 the audio file will pause . if 1 is held and the audio file arrived to it ends it will continue from the beginning. (loop 1) . I will also have a clocker to report how much time has elpased since sensor is 0. If more then x seconds the audio file will go back to beginnnig so next time sensor is held (1) it will start from the beginnnig.

here is my try with your abstraction.
the green part is to imitate the on off from the sensor. the blue is the analog data from sensor.
the orange part is my try to make a clocker that will start count when sensor is off. The yellow part is for small envelop to avoide clicks when audio is pause and resume.

How can I make the audio file go to the beginning when the orange part is reporting a bang (that time was elapsed) ?
Also - I'm not sure if the yellow section is working. Meaning if it is indeed making an envelope on every pause and resume ? Is that possible?

sfplay~example.pd

Thanks!

edit: the scale of the sensor should be inverted. 0 1023 0 1

edit 2: how can I make the sf-play2~ go back to the beginning of the audio file without starting it immediately?

edit3: how can I load the file to the sf-play2~ object without starting it? if I don't press "all" message it won't load the file. I would lik the file to be loaded to the beginnnig, but to start and play only when receiving data from sensor on off. for the moment if I'm not pressing all message the file won't play.

Howdy all,

I just found this and want to respond from my perspective as someone who has spent by now a good amount of time (paid & unpaid) working on the Pure Data source code itself.

I'm just writing for myself and don't speak for Miller or anyone else.

Mac looks good

The antialiasing on macOS is provided by the system and utilized by Tk. It's essentially "free" and you can enable or disable it on the canvas. This is by design as I believe Apple pushed antialiasing at the system level starting with Mac OS X 1.

There are even some platform-specific settings to control the underlying CoreGraphics settings which I think Hans tried but had issues with: https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/blob/master/tcl/apple_events.tcl#L16. As I recall, I actually disabled the font antialiasing as people complained that the canvas fonts on mac were "too fuzzy" while Linux was "nice and crisp."

In addition, the last few versions of Pd have had support for "Retina" high resolution displays enabled and the macOS compositor does a nice job of handling the point to pixel scaling for you, for free, in the background. Again, Tk simply uses the system for this and you can enable/disable via various app bundle plist settings and/or app defaults keys.

This is why the macOS screenshots look so good: antialiasing is on and it's likely the rendering is at double the resolution of the Linux screenshot.

IMO a fair comparison is: normal screen size in Linux vs normal screen size in Mac.

Nope. See above.

It could also just be Apple holding back a bit of the driver code from the open source community to make certain linux/BSD never gets quite as nice as OSX on their hardware, they seem to like to play such games, that one key bit of code that is not free and you must license from them if you want it and they only license it out in high volume and at high cost.

Nah. Apple simply invested in antialiasing via its accelerated compositor when OS X was released. I doubt there are patents or licensing on common antialiasing algorithms which go back to the 60s or even earlier.

tkpath exists, why not use it?

Last I checked, tkpath is long dead. Sure, it has a website and screenshots (uhh Mac OS X 10.2 anyone?) but the latest (and only?) Sourceforge download is dated 2005. I do see a mirror repo on Github but it is archived and the last commit was 5 years ago.

And I did check on this, in fact I spent about a day (unpaid) seeing if I could update the tkpath mac implementation to move away from the ATSU (Apple Type Support) APIs which were not available in 64 bit. In the end, I ran out of energy and stopped as it would be too much work, too many details, and likely to not be maintained reliably by probably anyone.

It makes sense to help out a thriving project but much harder to justify propping something up that is barely active beyond "it still works" on a couple of platforms.

Why aren't the fonts all the same yet?!

I also despise how linux/windows has 'bold' for default

I honestly don't really care about this... but I resisted because I know so many people do and are used to it already. We could clearly and easily make the change but then we have to deal with all the pushback. If you went to the Pd list and got an overwhelming consensus and Miller was fine with it, then ok, that would make sense. As it was, "I think it should be this way because it doesn't make sense to me" was not enough of a carrot for me to personally make and support the change.

Maybe my problem is that I feel a responsibility for making what seems like a quick and easy change to others?

And this view is after having put an in ordinate amount of time just getting (almost) the same font on all platforms, including writing and debugging a custom C Tcl extension just to load arbitrary TTF files on Windows.

Why don't we add abz, 123 to Pd? xyzzy already has it?!

What I've learned is that it's much easier to write new code than it is to maintain it. This is especially true for cross platform projects where you have to figure out platform intricacies and edge cases even when mediated by a common interface like Tk. It's true for any non-native wrapper like QT, WXWidgets, web browsers, etc.

Actually, I am pretty happy that Pd's only core dependencies a Tcl/Tk, PortAudio, and PortMidi as it greatly lowers the amount of vectors for bitrot. That being said, I just spent about 2 hours fixing the help browser for mac after trying Miller's latest 0.52-0test2 build. The end result is 4 lines of code.

For a software community to thrive over the long haul, it needs to attract new users. If new users get turned off by an outdated surface presentation, then it's harder to retain new users.

Yes, this is correct, but first we have to keep the damn thing working at all. I think most people agree with you, including me when I was teaching with Pd.

I've observed, at times, when someone points out a deficiency in Pd, the Pd community's response often downplays, or denies, or gets defensive about the deficiency. (Not always, but often enough for me to mention it.) I'm seeing that trend again here. Pd is all about lines, and the lines don't look good -- and some of the responses are "this is not important" or (oid) "I like the fact that it never changed." That's... thoroughly baffling to me.

I read this as "community" = "active developers." It's true, some people tend to poo poo the same reoccurring ideas but this is largely out of years of hearing discussions and decisions and treatises on the list or the forum or facebook or whatever but nothing more. In the end, code talks, even better, a working technical implementation that is honed with input from people who will most likely end up maintaining it, without probably understanding it completely at first.

This was very hard back on Sourceforge as people had to submit patches(!) to the bug tracker. Thanks to moving development to Github and the improvement of tools and community, I'm happy to see the new engagement over the last 5-10 years. This was one of the pushes for me to help overhaul the build system to make it possible and easy for people to build Pd itself, then they are much more likely to help contribute as opposed to waiting for binary builds and unleashing an unmanageable flood of bug reports and feature requests on the mailing list.

I know it's not going to change anytime soon, because the current options are a/ wait for Tcl/Tk to catch up with modern rendering or b/ burn Pd developer cycles implementing something that Tcl/Tk will(?) eventually implement or c/ rip the guts out of the GUI and rewrite the whole thing using a modern graphics framework like Qt. None of those is good (well, c might be a viable investment in the future -- SuperCollider, around 2010-2011, ripped out the Cocoa GUIs and went to Qt, and the benefits have been massive -- but I know the developer resources aren't there for Pd to dump Tcl/Tk).

A couple of points:

1. Your point (c) already happened... you can use Purr Data (or the new Pd-L2ork etc). The GUI is implemented in Node/Electron/JS (I'm not sure of the details). Is it tracking Pd vanilla releases?... well that's a different issue.

2. As for updating Tk, it's probably not likely to happen as advanced graphics are not their focus. I could be wrong about this.

I agree that updating the GUI itself is the better solution for the long run. I also agree that it's a big undertaking when the current implementation is essentially still working fine after over 20 years, especially since Miller's stated goal was for 50 year project support, ie. pieces composed in the late 90s should work in 2040. This is one reason why we don't just "switch over to QT or Juce so the lines can look like Max." At this point, Pd is aesthetically more Max than Max, at least judging by looking at the original Ircam Max documentation in an archive closet at work.

A way forward: libpd?

I my view, the best way forward is to build upon Jonathan Wilke's work in Purr Data for abstracting the GUI communication. He essentially replaced the raw Tcl commands with abstracted drawing commands such as "draw rectangle here of this color and thickness" or "open this window and put it here."

For those that don't know, "Pd" is actually two processes, similar to SuperCollider, where the "core" manages the audio, patch dsp/msg graph, and most of the canvas interaction event handling (mouse, key). The GUI is a separate process which communicates with the core over a localhost loopback networking connection. The GUI is basically just opening windows, showing settings, and forwarding interaction events to the core. When you open the audio preferences dialog, the core sends the current settings to the GUI, the GUI then sends everything back to the core after you make your changes and close the dialog. The same for working on a patch canvas: your mouse and key events are forwarded to the core, then drawing commands are sent back like "draw object outline here, draw osc~ text here inside. etc."

So basically, the core has almost all of the GUI's logic while the GUI just does the chrome like scroll bars and windows. This means it could be trivial to port the GUI to other toolkits or frameworks as compared to rewriting an overly interconnected monolithic application (trust me, I know...).

Basically, if we take Jonathan's approach, I feel adding a GUI communication abstraction layer to libpd would allow for making custom GUIs much easier. You basically just have to respond to the drawing and windowing commands and forward the input events.

Ideally, then each fork could use the same Pd core internally and implement their own GUIs or platform specific versions such as a pure Cocoa macOS Pd. There is some other re-organization that would be needed in the C core, but we've already ported a number of improvements from extended and Pd-L2ork, so it is indeed possible.

Also note: the libpd C sources are now part of the pure-data repo as of a couple months ago...

Discouraging Initiative?!

But there's a big difference between "we know it's a problem but can't do much about it" vs "it's not a serious problem." The former may invite new developers to take some initiative. The latter discourages initiative. A healthy open source software community should really be careful about the latter.

IMO Pd is healthier now than it has been as long as I've know it (2006). We have so many updates and improvements over every release the last few years, with many contributions by people in this thread. Thank you! THAT is how we make the project sustainable and work toward finding solutions for deep issues and aesthetic issues and usage issues and all of that.

We've managed to integrate a great many changes from Pd-Extended into vanilla and open up/decentralize the externals and in a collaborative manner. For this I am also grateful when I install an external for a project.

At this point, I encourage more people to pitch in. If you work at a university or institution, consider sponsoring some student work on specific issues which volunteering developers could help supervise, organize a Pd conference or developer meetup (this are super useful!), or consider some sort of paid residency or focused project for artists using Pd. A good amount of my own work on Pd and libpd has been sponsored in many of these ways and has helped encourage me to continue.

This is likely to be more positive toward the community as a whole than banging back and forth on the list or the forum. Besides, I'd rather see cool projects made with Pd than keep talking about working on Pd.

That being said, I know everyone here wants to see the project continue and improve and it will. We are still largely opening up the development and figuring how to support/maintain it. As with any such project, this is an ongoing process.

Out

Ok, that was long and rambly and it's way past my bed time.

Good night all.