I'm looking at doing an interactive A/V project and for the interactivity aspect I will have objects (probably spherical) that one can easily hold with one hand that will send information about position/orientation to be interpreted by a computer to which it is wirelessly connected.
I have a few questions to get me headed in the right direction...
Which microcontroller would be appropriate for this task? I have been playing around with a Teensy 3.1 but I feel this may be too powerful and it seems to be more difficult to develop the Cortex M4 chip into a custom PCB than it would be for an 8-bit AVR. Also power usage is an issue since it would be battery powered.
Should I be looking at any particular products/libraries for the location/orientation data? I was thinking of using a gyro/accel breakout board, not too sure whether getting this integrated into a PCB would be appropriate.
What are the pros/cons for different methods of connecting wirelessly to a computer? Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, radio etc.
The distance wouldn't exceed approx 30 metres.
Interpretation/processing of data: Is there a good way of getting the position/orientation data into something usable in a DAW? I have experience with Ableton and Max/MSP (through Max4Live) so that is my preferred method. Using Max would definitely streamline things.
The custom PCB aspect comes from the fact that these objects will ideally be pretty small - somewhere between golf ball and tennis ball sized - and also that there is the potential for many of them to be made, even for a single installation there could be a dozen in use at once.
Thanks!