Comments on: Roll Your Own Multitouch Screens, Tables: Max Multitouch Framework, PyMT

By: tonvibration

tonvibration — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:17:14 +0000

@ nat

I guess the price of the Lemur is the biggest problem. We all will have one if it will be about 500 euro or so…. On the other hand, a few years ago – before we went digital- we left 1000s of euro/dollar for hardware (My hardware-studio was about 10000). So everything is relative.

And you are right. The Lemur can only display the controls he know. But to me for building a control surface this never was a problem. I never missed any controltype. And while watching many videos of MAX or Pd applications I never have seen any “new” controltype that is not on the Lemur. So it is more a visual thing in limitation (the shape of the controls) than a shrink of possibilities (the function of the controls), donÂ´t?
(you can watch some of the controls IÂ´ve build here: http://de.youtube.com/user/tonvibration)

Well ok – rethink – it would be nice if I could display a waveform… but that is the only limitation I see so far….it migth be, that IÂ´m blind on that spot.

Sorry for argue. Maybe it is just because I have to justify my decision to buy a Lemur ;-) (wasnÂ´t easy with that price)

Anyway. Keep that open source thing going! There are endless possibilities….. and it is always nice to see your outcome here. (great times we are living in!)

By: Nat

Nat — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 02:18:13 +0000

Oh and I wanted to add, while I think the Lemur is a great device, it’s still limited, you cannot display what you want, while the widgets are nice, you can’t create your own. With Max and pyMT, there are no restrictions, so you can build pretty powerful things…

By: Nat

Nat — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:30:11 +0000

@tonvibration I think the idea of this post is to present the open source alternatives to the Lemur… The Lemur has been more than covered on this site so it’s nice to see there are other options (especially for people that aren’t willing to pay the high price of a Lemur…)

By: tonvibration

tonvibration — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 10:10:01 +0000

I wonder a little….
“The future: UIs whipped together graphically or with a few lines of code.” – thats what the Lemur actually is. Since 2005.

And you donÂ´t have to use MAX, Pd, Python or whatever. It is all in one box and no programming knowledge is needed. Do you think that all musicans are necessarily into programming? Well, most of the readers here are…. and things like MAXforLive will push that too. But if you just want to route a fader in Live isnÂ´t it a little bit hard to get into MAX to be able to do that?????
And what is about your “abstraction between your software and the interface”? If you have build your software in MAX, this will be gone. But if you want to control another VST or Ableton, you still have to build a control surface in MAX, donÂ´t you? So what is the difference?

I think this nice, but only for a special kind of people who have special programming knowledge in special programms. As a new “touchscreen controls for everyone” or “the seam dividing past and future” it forces the user too much to get deep into a abstract programming process.
Compared to that the Lemur is plug and play…..

By: Nat

Nat — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 20:04:23 +0000

@tiago morgado
pyMT works under OSX, I started making lemur-like widgets like the MultiSlider and ButtonMatrix,
works great !

By: tiago morgado

tiago morgado — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:00:32 +0000

it works with osx, right? maybe it’s a way to get a cheap lemur style-controller for much cheaper.. awesome

By: Kyle McDonald

Kyle McDonald — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 09:15:53 +0000

“does anyone make a multitouch kit for your regular monitor” If it’s an LCD screen, I started developing a framework for doing “multi-object” (like multitouch, in some ways) interaction with a webcam and Processing: http://vimeo.com/3273927

By: Peter Kirn

Peter Kirn — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 04:16:52 +0000

Yep, Usine is great. This is by no means a comprehensive list, so … other additions?

I think it’s just, if you like using Python, you’ll like PyMT … if you like Max, you’ll love that Max framework … you get the idea. Jordan + Owen, the guys using Brick, had that up and running with Processing/Java with no issue (also using the same TUIO protocol PyMT and last week’s rejected iPhone app use).

The real for a lot of people is, what’s the ideal hardware? So open to suggestions on that. (The list of gear on that Max page is a good place to start!)

By: fractal

fractal — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 03:58:38 +0000

Check Usine !!!

Thed futur is now and not just prototype useless on live set….

By: peter

peter — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:22:40 +0000

So does anyone make a multitouch kit for your regular monitor? I have a spare 15″ lying around…