Passive Multidimensional Input

[vimeo 2433260]

Any musician who has ever used a computer to create music will tell you that while this technology is more than capable of producing great music, it is always a much more intimate experience to create by physically playing an instrument. In an effort to bridge this gap, [Randall Jones] has built a passive multidimensional interface that uses multitouch input to create an intimate experience that rivals that of a traditional musical instrument. While this concept may seem very complicated, the interface is made of only copper strips, rubber, and wood. At $50, this interface was designed to be inexpensive and appears to be very easy to use. As seen in the video, this interface can be used as anything from a drum to a multitouch synthesizer.

[via Make]

15 thoughts on “Passive Multidimensional Input

  1. Wow, just wow, great idea and implementation. The responsiveness and pressure sensitivity when compared to visually done multi touch is daunting.

    I’m going to go home from work today and glare at my multitouch system with geek shame.

  2. Very impressive results. Are there any occlusion issues? It seems that if you used more than 2 fingers there are some cases a third press might get masked or worse incorrectly cause the other 2 points to show increased pressure.

  3. happypinguin there is 400KHz sampling mentioned in the vid, that means expensive sampling card for your computer (or 848 TV card if you know how to hack one), but you still need to write the DSP code. Looking at the link there is no code published (apart from some libs for the commercial touchpad called MSP)

  4. Ok i understand how i could do this. i have creamware scope SDK(lots of DSP on a PCI card) and a spare fostex cheapo ADAT interface.

    sending 10-20 khz audio waves, easy.

    send the returns to the front end of a vocoder to get seperate control signal for each frequency.

    after that is the “centeride function” im not so sure about that :p

  5. how about a stringless guitar using 2 of these panels, one for where you pluck the strings and one for where you hold them down. use copper wire on top instead of copper strips.

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