Software
Testing Max/MSP-Patch in the Lab
The software perspective of the music glove was realized using the Max/MSP-software which is a graphical environment for music, audio, and multimedia.
The input data from the Teleo module could directly be processed by Max/MSP whereas for the RFID-Reader an extension had to be written that connects Max/MSP and the Reader by using the Event Heap.
The final Max/MSP patch and the Event Heap extension used for the glove are available for download:
Communication between RFID chips and Max/MSP
The communicaton between the Radiofrequency Identifcation (RFID) chips and our Max/MSP framework is processed using two layers:
- The RFID reader hardware detects RFID chips which are nearer than a certain distance.
- RFIDEventPort: This Java program reads RFID events from an external port (COM or USB), converts them into a suitable format and puts them onto the Event Heap.
- mgRFIDDetect is a Max/MSP-Extension using the Java-Interface MXJ. It creates a connection to the EventHeap and subscribes for RFID-events created by the RFIDEventPort. If a specified RFID tag is avaiable its index is put out and can be used for instrument selection.
The following image illustrates how the mgRFIDDetect extension works:
Mapping Input
The following table shows how the input determined by the finger combination is mapped to the appropiate MIDI note by the Max/MSP Patch:
| Output | Input | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Note | MIDI note index (octave + x) |
Thumb (1) | Index finger(2) |
Middle finger (3) |
Ring finger (4) |
Little finger (5) |
Input index |
| C | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| C# | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| D | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| D# | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 12 |
| E | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 8 |
| F | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 24 |
| F# | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 16 |
| G | 7 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 18 |
| G# | 8 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 14 |
| A | 9 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 28 |
| A# | 10 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 26 |
| H | 11 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 30 |
Max/MSP Patches
The following sheets document the design progress of our Max/MSP software module:
working draft 06/29/2005
working draft 06/30/2005
working draft (sensor) 07/08/2005
working draft 07/10/2005
working draft 07/12/2005
final version 07/18/2005
- Authors: Malte Weiß, Gero Herkenrath, Tobias Schierge
- Last updated: Tuesday 07/19/2005
- Validate source: XHTML 1.0 strict | CSS 2.0