Following the post I did about using nintendo's wiimote as a MIDI controller, I had loads of emails about the same issue: People using the popular music sequencer Ableton live, couldn't setup rotation and acceleration MIDI adresses properly, as the wiimote constantly sends many values, and using ableton's auto detect function is getting a bit crazy..

I just made a new Glovepie script to make things a bit easier, and send each value separately.
Now when you use the MIDI autodetect function, you need to Press:
- F1, F2 or F3 to get the wiimote X, Y or Z rotation value.
- F4, F5 or F6 to get the X, Y or Z acceleration values.

When this is done, you need to Press the B button to activate all these midi values (acceleration/ rotation), and you can still use all the buttons to trigger loops, effects etc..


Wiimote to MIDI: Ableton Live
The above link is a Glovepie script, you need to follow this tutorial to use it.


This is quite a basic update, but I know that this is gonna help some of you, and I'll do my best to do a proper update (with infrared positioning, internal speaker and force feedback).


Other tutorials:
- Wiimote to Midi (PC).
- Wiimote to Midi (PC) french version.
- Wiimote to Midi: VJing video.
- Wiimote to Midi for Ableton Live (PC).
- Wiimote to Midi: Mac & Linux.

Video report from ClubTransmediale in Berlin.

Following the A/V set I did at the M12 gallery during Avit Berlin, the venue owners, visomat.inc, asked me to do some similar visual mapping for an installation at ClubTransmediale, a great clubnight and festival at clubMaria, with visuals, workshops, interactive stuff..

So I came back to Berlin a month later, at the end of January, to spend a week the German capital and collaborate with visomat to animate and enlight the minimal sculpture they prepared..
As this year festival's theme was "Building Space", the idea was to create visuals during the event, and explore the links between space, volume, depth and light.

Here's a short video of the installation and the visuals projected:


Highres version - Download - Pictures

More details and Pictures on antivj.com

This project has probably been one of my most interesting and inspiring so far, many thanks to clubtransmediale and visomat.

Quite a lot of bookings in the next two months, especially since the installation I did at clubtransmediale in Berlin with visomat in January, and I received nice feedbacks from festival organisers and promoters. I'll be on the road for about two months (that's my first proper "tour"), so if you are around one of these events, and interested in VJing, live visuals, drop me an email for guestlist or just to chat and have a pint :)

30/03/07 - France / Paris / Batofar                                   vjset
06/04/07 - France / Lille / Paysages Electroniques              visual mapping
08/04/07 - France / Lille / Paysages Electroniques              visual mapping
13/04/07 - France / Paris / Elysee Montmartre                   vjset
14/04/07 - France / Dijon / la vapeur                                vjset
21/04/07 - France / Bourges / printemps de Bourges          visual mapping  &  vjset
28/04/07 - Switzerland / Geneva - Mapping festival *start   visual mapping 

03/05/07 - Switzerland / Geneva - Mapping festival *end     visual mapping 
10/05/07 - Romania / Bucarest - TBC                                visual mapping 
11/05/07 - UK / Manchester / FutureSonic                          visual mapping
12/05/07 - UK / Manchester / FutureSonic                          visual mapping 
18/05/07 - UK / Bristol / Timbuk2 - Cuisine                        visual mapping  &  vjset
25/05/07 - Switzerland / Zurich / Puls 5 - Tweakfest            visual mapping  &  vjset
26/05/07 - Switzerland / Zurich / Puls 5 - Tweakfest            visual mapping  &  vjset


I'll do my best to post pictures and videos quite regularly.
Hope to see you there...

  

Google maps passe à la vitesse supérieure en mettant en ligne des photos haute résolution. Un résultat très impressionant, qui peut donner froid dans le dos aux protecteurs de la vie privée.

A noter que seules quelques zones ont été shootées en haute résolution (au Tchad, et à Sidney), car cette technique n'est plus satellite mais aérienne, et nécessite le passage d'un avion haut dessus de chaque zone pour obtenir une telle qualité. Dans tous les cas on peut quand même commencer à se poser des questions...

Quelques clichés choisis:
- Des nerds en croisière
- On joue aux petites voitures ?
- Le nom d'un VJ c'est glissé dans cette photo.. :)
- Un skatepark au bord de l'eau.. rhaaaa..

Pas mal d'autres perles sur geo-trotter
Via: ecrans

 

Following a large amount of emails I received, I decided to translate in english my recent post dedicated to the new Nintendo's toy . Released in December 2006, the last console of the Japanese brand, the Wii, claims to be revolutionary by its new user interface, the Wiimote (hydrid of gamepad, remote control and movements sensor ), which completely changes the manner of playing by putting at contribution the player, who can from now interact more naturaly with the game, rather than simply press buttons.

How does it work?
In addition to the traditional buttons, force feedback and the integrated mini-speaker, the true innovation is the presence of a gravity and acceleration sensor (the ADXL330, used in the army or automobile safety, for airbags systems) inside the Wiimote which collects the movements and acceleration of the Wiimote on each of the 3 axis, X, Y et Z.

The good news is that rather than using a proprietary protocol to transmit the infos from the Wiimote to the Wii, and then lock its hardware to keep an exclusive use of it, Nintendo has made the excellent decision (probably by commercial will) to use the Bluetooth protocol, standard of communication on PC and Mac for several years. This means that you can connect your Wiimote to your computer, and  program it rather simply for any use you want.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

In this Post, we will learn how to connect Wiimote to a PC, and how to transform the values received into MIDI signals, to be able to control any VJing software (like Arkaos) or production/live audio (Ableton to mention only one of them).

Requirements:
- A Wiimote, of course (approximately £20/35$, online or at your local  video games shop).
- A Bluetooth Dongle  (if your computer doesn't have Bluetooth already, about £10/15$).
- Bluesoleil (shareware, it usually comes for free with Bluetooth dongles).
- GlovePie (freeware).
- MidiYoke (freeware, required for MIDI).


Connect your Wiimote to your PC:
Once your dongle installed, your Wiimote unpacked and filled with fresh batteries:
1 - Launch Bluesoleil (a grey icon appears in the taskbar, and then becomes blue once once the Bluetooth dongle initialized. Now, double-click on the blue icon to launch the program)
2 - You have to enable the "detection" mode: press simultaneously buttons 1 and 2 of your magic remote (LEDs start to flicker). 
In Bluesoleil, start "device detection" by clicking on the orange sphere in the middle.
3 - Your Wiimote has been detected, and appears as an icon in Bluesoleil, now you must activate the communication: select the wiimote icon (1 click) and then click on  "HID service", the mouse icon. if the connection is capricious, you might have to press simultaneously buttons 1 and 2 again,
If all occurs well, you should see a small animation which means a successful connection.


Interpret the signals:
The Wiimote is now connected, and sends its signal to your PC, but it is not being interpreted yet. This is where GlovePie will be helpful, to convert the signals received and return them to your favorites softwares and games.
Indeed, the software developed by Carl Kenner has the role of converting any type of signal (from a mouse, Joystick, a P5 glove) into another signal (MIDI, variables...) using a simple scripting language and/or a GUI.

Midiiiiiii !
So, now it gets exciting.. Everything is now ready, the last thing to do is to install MidiYoke (a virtual MIDI port, which emulates a MIDI device to use like a "bridge" with your midi softwares) then download and launch this Glovepie script, which will finally enable you to get the Wiimote movements to any software supporting midi.

In the latest version beta0.2, you get the  of  X, Y and Z slope value from your Wiimote, which are converted into  #CC values 30, 31 and 32, variables from 0 to 127, which allows you to scratch a video or to fade it up and down by waving your Wiimote in the air. Also you must test it with Ableton, the results are very surprising, especially on the live effects!

As you can see, the buttons are mapped to "midi notes", and allows you to launch events very simply. You can also send keyboard events instead, or change midi notes values depending on your needs. The script is now comented in english, and I will keep updating it this way.

It's still a bit basic, and there are many extra things possible, so the next steps will be to use acceleration sensors, use the sensorbar, and also use the Nunchuk (the second gamepad available), and maybe connect more wiimotes for multi-user interaction...
Don't hesistate to post links of what you achieved with wiimote2midi, and ask for updates or special requests...

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23/02/07 - beta0.1
Wiimote2midi.pie 
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24/02/07 - beta0.2 (comments in english)
Wiimote2midi.pie 
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Here's a short video demo of VJing with a Wiimote: