Camille, the programmer of OSCulator, got his program working with the Velocity-sensitive Guitar Hero drums. Download OSCulator here:
http://www.osculator.net/wp/

I’m still using JunXion to receive MIDI from the Rock Band Drums. Check out my other tutorial for setting JunXion up.

I created a Logic environment with a switch that is triggered by the MIDI note that the Rock Band pedal is sending via JunXion. It transforms the closed high hat to the open one when the pedal is released. I’m also using another transformer to amplify the velocity of the MIDI drums by 30, because the GH drums are pretty quiet otherwise.

Download the Osculator file, the JunXion file, and the Logic file here: gh_rb_setup.zip

Props to Camille for his help, Maeve for me stealing back a loop from her song, and Samantha and Fred Tesche for Dark Matter.

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!

I’m trying to think of ways of altering the original videos that I’m rescoring so that they seem fresh again. Here is another original video:

One idea I had was to overlay the video with an inset of the recording session and a scrolling score:

I am interested in data visualizations…Is this too much information? What other information would you want to see?

Finally, I thought of replacing the main character with Mario from the Mario Kart trailer driving, and then decided it would be way too much work to complete.

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: