My music keyboard is placed underneath my window, making it a great platform for my cats to walk on. They would constantly step on the keys or buttons, disrupting my Logic sessions by changing MIDI channels or programs. But the last straw was when one of my cats vomited on the keyboard. I decided to take steps to protect it.

After stopping at two hardware stores, I couldn’t find acrylic sheets thick enough to protect the keyboard, but got a referral to Gavrieli Plastics, who were helpful and had what I was looking for. For about $200 I got enough 1/4″ clear acrylic to encase the keyboard, acrylic hinges, Weld-On 16 Solvent Cement, cuts to the dimensions I wanted, and at the last minute, holes drilled in the back of the case for the cables to go in.

I peeled off the masking, assembled the box outside using bookends and books to create the right angles, and applied the adhesive. The adhesive stinks and is toxic so it’s good to do this outdoors, though I’ve seen youtube users touching the stuff. Most tutorials recommend using gloves to protect your hands.

Now that I know more about acrylic, I would have preferred Weld-On 4 and a syringe-type applicator. There are tutorials on youtube on how to weld acrylic, and using a syringe and capillary cementing looks easier and more secure if you have clean cuts in the plastic, which I did. The Weld-On 16 proved to be more difficult to work with because it poured out of the tube quickly, and you can’t wipe off the remaining residue, so I’m left with a few blotches. However, it did the job. I essentially applied the Weld-On like glue on the edges and let it set. The solvent cement actually melts the plastic and fuses it together, which is why it is more similar to welding than to gluing.

The hinges simply welded on as well; I just held them in place for 3 minutes each. You just have to be careful to apply the Weld-On away from the moving parts.

After a few hours, my roommate helped me move it indoors (I was worried the cold night temperatures would expand the plastic and interrupt its setting–some websites recommend welding at temperatures above 60°F), and after 24 hours I installed it with the keyboard.

The case has a hinged top and an open front for playing and accessing controls. Its dimensions are 55.5″ long x 8″ high x 16″ deep for my M-Audio Keystation Pro 88. Because the Acrylic is 1/4″ thick, I had the sides cut 15.75″ deep (instead of 16″) so that they would be flush with the front. The drilled holes for the cables are 2″ wide and 5″ apart centered in the back. I left extra room in the back for cable clearance, and extra height for playing. For the most part, aside from plugging in the cables, because the box is clear, I can play and access all controls without opening the top.

The case does its job nicely. It can handle light objects on top of it near the hinges. If you have irregular shaped objects and not a lot of space, this is one way to get more surface space. It does feel a little fragile – the bottom bended a lot when I put it on an X-style keyboard stand, so I reinforced it with wood underneath. The top bends a little too, because it is only attached by the hinges. If you don’t need it to be hinged, it would be a lot stronger. I might have gone with a thicker type of acrylic, but I didn’t want the thing to be too heavy. At 1/4″ it is pretty light (I can move it around myself).

So far, the cats have stayed away from it.

(Replace the [s with <)
Now you can add ?autoplay=false to any page or blog post on my site and it will disable autoplay.

Thanks to this post by Camille, developer of OSCulator, I finally got the Wii World Tour drums to work with velocity sensitivity. Unfortunately, as the video demonstrates, they don’t work too well. Either they’re not sensitive enough, or bluetooth doesn’t have enough bandwidth to transfer notes fast enough.

I also talk a little bit about being out in LA for our summer semester program.

Osculator can be downloaded here. It is free to try and costs $39 to buy. It’s a great program, though I’m disappointed with what seems like hardware limits on the drums.

Here is a slideshow of photos I took on the trip. Much love to all of you wonderful people I met on the road and on the playa!

-edit-
Now with 25 videos at the end of the slideshow. You can click on this link and click on “info on” to view the slide show in full screen and with captions:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jordan314/sets/72157607134070713/show/

There are circuits out there for converting the 5V to the proper data pins and voltage, but I already had a 12V car adapter that would supply them. So instead, the goal was to supply 12V to my car adapter with batteries.

The solution:

2 6V lantern batteries
Alligator Clips
Female Car Adapter
iPhone Car Adapter
Cardboard Box

If you wire the batteries in series you get 12V. It works fine, though the adapter whines pretty loudly which worries me a little. Also, I am aware that batteries encased in paper and cardboard are a slight fire hazard. I’m only going to charge this outside while I’m watching it. (Any advice is appreciated, this isn’t much different than how the iPhone charges in a car is it?)

Thanks to Fred for his help conceptualizing this.

Today I figured out how to easily turn the rock band drum set for Wii into a MIDI drum controller:

I did this with Junxion, a program that allows you to transform USB and wireless game controller input into MIDI data. I’ve seen demos of other MIDI rock band instruments online, but with the Wii instruments already in USB form this has to be the easiest setup yet. This also seems to have the lowest latency. Junxion is not free but a demo can be downloaded here:

http://www.steim.org/steim/junxion_v3.html

I’ve also used Junxion to turn other game controllers such as DDR dance pads into instruments. I’m using the old PowerPC version 1.4, but version 3 should work fine. Junxion 3 also now works with Wii remotes.

I just used the Studio Tight Kit preset in Ultrabeat in Logic for the drum sounds. Junxion automatically makes an input port which Logic recognizes and listens to.

My setup for this demo was this:

The steps are basically this:

• Plug in the drum controller.
• Launch Junxion.
• Turn off the other devices (USB Optical Mouse, Apple Keyboard, and Apple IR default to enabled at startup)
• Start hitting the pads and watch which sensor status is triggered. Your MIDI app should be sounding or at least receiving input. If not, select Junxion Port 1 as a MIDI input.
• Drag the value of the sensor’s “Dat1″ up or down to change it to the note value you want; for example I set the bass drum to 36 (C2) which triggers the bass drum in Ultrabeat.
• I muted sensor 8 because it was always sounding on any hit.

That’s it! Details may have changed in the new versions. If you have the full version you can save your configuration.

The Rock Band guitar works with Junxion as well! Just plug the USB receiver into the computer, turn on the guitar and follow the same steps. Now I’m even happier that I bought Rock Band!

You can get all the hardware for less than $10 and it only takes about 2 minutes to make.

Materials:
1 brass door hinge post (~3 inches long)
6 small washers that fit on the post (~half inch wide)
5 thin large washers that fit on the post (~1 inch wide)
1 cork, cut in half
1 drill, to drill hole slightly smaller than hinge post in cork halves
1 ink pad
Plastic container to store the stamp (otherwise it gets messy)

Watch the video for building instructions. Leave your comments and questions here! I tried rubber washers and the ink sticks better, but the lines were too blurry and they were too flimsy. I tried smaller washers but they were too small for the cork. So far, the large metal washers work best.

I installed the software and it gave me a “FishtankVR has encoundered a problem and needs to close” error, but that was fixed by installing the DirectX SDK.

I can get the program to work just by holding my two IR pens up to my head. I will admit it doesn’t look as good as on Johnny Lee’s video — the perspective adapts but doesn’t look as 3D. Part of the problem is my body casts a shadow in front of the projector screen and it’s harder to believe a projector screen is a window anyway. I’m also still tweaking the screen width and head width settings though.

I like how he says taping an IR sensor bar to a baseball hat is a “common trick.” I also like how he says “if you’re a Nintendo Wii game developer, I wanna see some games.” I would have said, “if you’re a Nintendo Wii game developer, I want a million dollars.” I can’t believe he released this code for free.

It looks like similar head tracking technology for games has been around for a while — check out this demonstration of head tracking and movement amplification here: TrackIR Explained…but this is way cheaper (a wiimote costs $35 or so and you can make IR pens for $3).

I modified my original design, swapping the LED onto the other end of the pen and ditching the cardboard. The thinner end plus the see through tube makes this version work magnificently.

This version was harder because I had to drill holes for the led and the wires to go through several parts of the base, and then twist and untwist the base as I screwed it on to keep the wires straight. However the circuit remains the same.

Original Post
After seeing Johnny Lee‘s youtube video on using a wiimote to turn any display into a touchscreen device, I knew I had to try it. I already had a projector and a wiimote, and only needed the software and an IR pen to complete the project.

I went to radio shack and bought an IR LED and some push button switches, and then went to blockbuster. I didn’t find anything, and then as I was leaving something caught my eye. I came back in and bought two candy “pens” with fans on them, for about $3 each. These pens had a switch on the side, had a battery inside them and electronics at the end and I knew they’d be perfect for housing the electronics I bought.
The switch on the side was housed better than any button I could mount manually. At the register, all I had were the candy pens, and the young woman that rang me up looked at me funny and said “these are…fun…”. I thought about explaining it and decided it was somehow less nerdy to really like candy pens than to try and explain how I was going to convert them into a multitouch display IR controller.

I opened the fan pen (enclosed with screws, not glue, perfect!) and it was a simple process to rip out the motor and eat the candy. I tried plugging in other visible LEDs I had lying around but they didn’t work. Disappointed, I tried my wii watch battery with them and they worked. Why didn’t the AA cell work? It turns out my color LEDs were rated at 3 volts, and the IR LED is actually 1.2-1.6V. A single battery is perfect. No resistors or additional batteries are necessary. Perfect!

Here is the radio shack IR LED I bought:

And here are the specs:

The hole at the top where the fan was was initially bigger than the LED itself, so I took a piece of cardboard and placed it underneath the hole and then stuck the led contacts through that to hold it and separate the contacts.

Putting the LED in:

It was then a simple job to solder the LED to the wire…Just make sure you wire the negative, cathode end of the LED to the wire that connects to the negative end of the battery — it’s the wire on the LED that’s shorter.

I closed up the thing and tested it on the nintendo wii sensor bar sensitivity page and it works great! I couldn’t get bluesoleit to work, but I got Johnny Lee’s software working with the software that came with my laptop, Tobisha Bluetooth Stack.

My only complaint is that the thickness of the top sometimes blocks the wiimote’s view of the LED. I tried flipping the pen around but having the sensor in the back combined with the rotation of the pen with your wrist degrades the accuracy of the sensor. I may redo these to place the LED somewhere else in the pen, but the battery and switch work great!

Anyone that doesn’t understand why on earth you would need an IR pen needs to check out this video: