~Proceedings ICMCISMCI2014 14-20 September 2014, Athens, Greece
Sensors2PD: Mobile sensors and WiFi information as input for Pure Data
Antonio Deusany de Carvalho Junior
Computer Music Research Group
Universidade de So Paulo
dj@ime.usp.br
ABSTRACT
This article presents the results of some experiments using
mobile sensors in patches of pure data. We are considering normal sensor, connected devices and Android also
focusing on information as hotspots available as our best
improvement in this way. During testing was performed
some communication through the web server, implementing push notifications, and we apply this approach in smart
phone applications to react on interactive sound installations. Ambient sound is generated using Pure Data patches,
and is collectively changed in the installation environment.
Sensors2PD is a generic application that can load any Pure
Data patch and can be freely used for other experiments.
The description of the application and installation ideas are
discussed based on technical results of our tests. Our approach is analyzed as a good concept for use in mobile music performances and installations, with clear advantages
for sound and music computing.
1. INTRODUCTION
Users interaction on mobile music pieces have been improved on diverse modalities. Nowadays, it is common the
scenario where user receives some instructions and normally uses some interfaces, web pages, or apps conditioned
to a piece. On this situation, the user notices what is going
to happen if some click is being done and how the things
work. Corroborating with this idea, we think that this area
have great improvement during the last decade. Another
point is that it is becoming hard to add different interactions from the perspective of the new devices to applications, and specifically to Pure Data Patches.
Mobile is anywhere and everywhere, so we can expect
a lot of mobile devices at every concert from classical to
experimental. Advances on technology has increased the
number of features in devices such as sensors and transceivers,
taking advantage of features of nanotechnology and processing. Another major point to keep in mind is the evolution of the Internet connection. WiFi internet access is
something must have in any public place, even though in
some cases the service is not so good for a crowd. Moreover, to avoid interruption of Internet access at these sites,
Copyright: 2014 Antonio Deusany de Carvalho Junior et al.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the
C vC n..nUr. s which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
author and source are credited.
acquiring a GPRS/3G/4G plan is a condition for being always on. The devices are always looking for the best way
to communicate over the Internet, and nowadays WiFi connections are chosen with a higher priority, because of its
speed and range, considering that users save a lot of WiFi
networks with automatic connection option checked. It is
important to note that mobile devices continues searching
(best) available Internet connection, even when connected.
Thinking of presentations of mobile music, lots of sensors and specific local information on mobile devices can
be used in applications. Using sensors is attractive considering its variety and sensitivity range. Besides sensor
importance, we became interested in the use of WiFi information that is reported over time. We also used the continuous Internet connection to exchange text information
between users through web server.
Some works have already evaluated the use of WiFi Indoor location for robots [1, 2] and had good results: 1 meter accuracy, approximately. This observation can be useful for presentations inside where GPS will not work, and
the use of WiFi information can not be easily perceived by
users, if the mobile device is always in search of mobile
networks, as already pointed. The fact that the phone is always connected the network is another important information that had taken our attention especially because during
some performances we shared some information among
participants through Wireless and had improvements in interactions without user perception too. Surely, heavy consumption of 3G for large flow of information can be a problem for some people, then it should be better to use short
messages and send them sporadically to avoid running out
Internet User data occurs. This approach may be useful
for sending information and receiving notification through
a web server and create new forms of interaction between
users during presentations of mobile music.
We are going present the way we developed Sensors2PD,
how easy we can send sensors informations to Pure Data
patches, and explain the other possibilities we can get if
we use sensors of WiFi and web servers on performancerelated applications. In the end there will be an explanation
about experiences with the application.
2. RELATED WORK
This area has a bunch of works related to mobile music installations for user interaction using sensors and web servers
with mobile devices. The main focus of some works are
becoming similar, and they discuss that HTML5 and Javascript
on web browsers are the best solution for this kind of inter
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