Hi
I hope this is the right place to put my post...
I'm a total newbie to this
I need to trigger a solenoid in time with a 3 minute quicktime movie. Basically the solenoid needs to fire once at the beginning of the movie, reset, then keep firing at the beginning of the movie.
This project is for an art exhibition where a piano key is played by the solenoid at the start of the movie....
hope that makes sense
p
Triggering / driving the solenoid is realtively easy. You can check this tutorial from the playground :
http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Learning/SolenoidTutorial
The hard part is how to make Arduino know when the move starts, i'm afraid i don't have a solution for that.
Hi thanks for that.
So basically it's about finding a way to link to QT. Perhaps max MSP? Any ideas anyone?
Are you on a Mac. If so I would use Quartz Composer.
Hey thanks,
Yes I am on a Mac...
So, I got Quartz composer up and running.
If I can work it out I think it may be triggered using MIDI... but not sure how.
Can you point me to any tutorials/forums that you know of?
cheers
Write a program that starts the movie, and talks to the Arduino. I don't do mac programming, so I don't know if there's an easy way to embed quicktime into your programs. But I would bet you the last donut that Processing will do the trick.
Or you could convert your video to a sensible, usable format that doesn't require some weird, annoying player. :
Yes, yes, I know QuickTime is used a lot but I still hate finding a flick I want to check out and beeing told I need realplayer or quicktime. Why on earth can't everyone just use mpeg/avi or whatever else that is generally supported? VLC is by FAR the best mediaplaying program out there and it is embeddable in your own programs. If you want to do it real easy, get a hold of Visual Studio and use Windows mediaplayer in your program.
The two sites I found best for Quartz composer are :-
http://www.quartzcompositions.com/phpBB2/upload/files.php?cat=2
There is a Wiki with tips and tutorials as well as tones of examples.
And
http://kineme.net/QuartzComposerPatches
This last one has many extension patches and one of them is a serial output so that will allow you to talk directly to the Arduino. I think that patch is in beta so you have to sign up to get it but that's free.
Alternatively as you said you could use MIDI but that would require a MIDI interface on the Mac as well.