Hello all,
I don't have any hardware yet. I've been studying and have narrowed it down to the Arduino Mega + Ethernet shield or a Make Controller v2.0 Application Kit.
I'm leaning toward Arduino because the community here seems much more lively and there also seem to be many books with Arduino examples, etc.
I'm new to micro-controllers so I want to skip programming the board as much as possible and handle that in the software end of things (MaxMSP or Flash AS3). I'm basically looking to pass information from sensors (via ethernet) to and from a computer and have the raw data processed by a program on the computer.
I'm basically preparing to use some ultrasonic sensors, something like this: Ultrasonic Range Finder - LV-MaxSonar-EZ1 - SEN-00639 - SparkFun Electronics . I plan to daisy chain them around a room and sense where a participant may be positioned in a room. Based on that information audio/video projections could be triggered.
This seems like it should be a pretty common type of installation problem. Can anyone share their hardware/software setups and techniques? Would the Mega or the Make Controller be better suited to such tasks?
After much toiling with middleman apps, I realized this is by far the best approach to handle comms from the Arduino to well, basically anything else... but especially the almighty GlovePIE... which can read practically every input protocol ever invented, then emulate even more devices and protocols... but won't read a serial port :-X
I wonder also if it something like a wi-fi shield exists... the awesomeness would be hugely increased
Anyways, from what I've been reading tonight, it seems the Ethernet library can handle UDP, which is pretty much the only requirement for OSC... but I haven't seen an implemented OSC library yet to use with it... My guess is that that part would need to be written yet...
I find it odd that people aren't showing much interest in bypassing the middleman and working on getting the Arduino to speak OSC by itself... that would make working with it a whole lot easier, since there would be no need for intermediary apps to confuse you (even more) when it doesn't work :
If i can get an ethernet shield, I might just try this... if it works... oh the awesomeness!!
Since the original post and much research, I decided to go with the Make Controller v2.0. It has built in support for OSC and ethernet is also built into the board.
I've been experimenting a bit and found that it was very easy to implement my project, and I didn't have to program the board at all. Later I did elect to program my IP, mask & gateway in the firmware on the board for convenience, but it wasn't necessary for the project to work.
I'm starting an MFA program at the University of Connecticut in August in Installation/New Media. I'm looking for artists/engineers/photographers to collaborate with. If anyone is interested please contact me!
