Hi there,
I would like to share a project I am working on for a while which might interest anyone who have tried or like getting sensors or buttons or in TD.
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 quickly and reliably.
After doing that with arduino and alternatives for years, but encountering so many limitations and struggles, I decided to develop and share a much easier, convenient and robust solution for all: “Pipo Interfaces”
It will be an open source project which will launch 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.
You can also check the Insta
Any feedback or questions welcome !
Hi, this looks really cool. I am actually attempting to do something similar so I have a few questions and maybe I can use your kit instead for prototyping myself.
So we’re Talking HID here, Your website doesn’t mention joystick/controller standards?. It’s much easier than keyboard or mouse input for me.
How about having them OpenVR compatible so that we could mimic VR controllers and have inputs for VR prototyping (can of Worms, I know)
Finally output, I can see input, which is what everybody solves for anyway, but outputs such as force feedback, haptics, motor control or just any kind of amplitude current would be nice since it’s really missing from many things out there.
This latter point does address the lack of a joystick output as a CHOP in touch designer itself. I Believe prototyping today with output is the game changer and the nut to crack.
I would be happy to discuss & maybe put some resources to help for output
Although congratulations for attempting this whole thing!, p
Thanks for the positive and constructive feedback !
Since it is going to be an opensource project, the available features on the modules will evolve a lot for sure. And if the project launches successfully, I am hoping to be able to extend the module family over time. But to get things running, I limited the initial feature set to a reasonable bundle.
HID: the modules could be able to do joystick/controller mode. I have done some trials over usb, but it is not implemented yet. Note the modules are independent, so there is a limited numbers of inputs which could be mapped to output controls, leading to a partial joystick config. While this can be working in touchdesigner, it might not be usable in other software. However, when working in touchdesigner, using OSC is the most flexible protocol in my opinion.
OpenVR: Interesting suggestion, but is indeed a whole topic
Output: I am currently doing some tests to enable “Pipo Analog” to use its inputs both ways so it can output voltage (to control servos, relays, etc,…). Is this what you mean ?
Unfortunately almost any other output types would require dedicated hardware, so this would have to be for future modules.
Don’t hesitate to contact me on insta, via email, or keep chatting here. And thanks for the support, appreciated.
Cool, there’s one great prototyping 2-way thing for me that would be interesting: a force-feedback knob. It could be rotated from the pc outwards to the device and push back against the user turning it on the device. This is very useful for simulations etc… tug of war between users in different locations etc…
Cheers! P
It’s a nice and rather specific idea ! Still there might be an interesting middle ground.
Doing proper force feedback is a whole technical topic, but having a simplified version of it might be possible by doing simple motor PID control. I see some valuable code piece to have in the project in the future. Having a control loop running on the modules, and leveraging pipo framework to easily update target/settings from software and gui would indeed be very powerful/practical.
So, if you would plug-in the right output hardware to pipo analog (driver/encoder), then it could act as a pc interface and this should be feasible with some dev work. Still keep in mind that applications where very fast control loop input updates is required (like we do for cnc, 3D printing, etc…) require extremely tight timing control which would not be possible wirelessly, and is likely outside pipo applications targets.
But I like the idea of using pipo as an interface to drive motors. To be further explored !
Thanks for discussing this, I think FFB is a topic that has always been avoided for some reason. Somehow everybody thinks interactivity is just pushing buttons Instead of a feedback loop and I can’t pin down why it is so difficult to do force feedback in prototyping. The code for managing the feedback loop is not that complicated (besides the absolutely broken HID standards by Microsoft and the other game companies) and it can be achieved with hardware that is not so expensive either. Prototyping does not require extremely fast or accurate industrial grade components. It’s the angle that I always have been into. I am thinking I’ll have to dig in (which I have been researching and contemplating for a long time haha). I’ll definitely be happy to have a sounding board with this. Have a good one! P