I would love to support Pangolin, unfortunately Pangolin is a locked-down proprietary system and it is currently not possible to talk to their DAC (they have promised a public API, but have yet to follow through with one).
BlueFang
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I will add faster modulation to the list of feature requests...
As far as driving the RGB ILDA inputs with audio, that should be fine - but most lasers have an upper limit on the modulation speed of each laser diode - but I don't think there is any harm in driving this signal faster than supported - depending on the design of the driver circuit there is probably a low-pass filter anyway.
There are two modes to the color modulator. Solid mode and LFO mode. In solid mode the entire shape is a single color - and the way to modulate the color change rate is with the "hue rot" dial that is under the "saturation" dial.
In LFO mode, the color modulation is performed in HLS color space - and each component (hue, lightness, saturation) has its own modulation controls. To modulate the speed of the hue you would adjust the "hue mod" dial (the one to the right of "hue width".
In general the "width" dials of each control determines how wide the values are applied around where the color chooser UI node is, and the mod dial controls how fast the modulation occurs.
Hope that makes sense.
The next release of Maxwell (in development) - will have the ability to process audio in an x/y plot. However, the output is still vector in nature and not continuous stream audio. So you will be able to view audio / oscilloscope music as output - but you will not be able to create audio streams - as mentioned, Maxwell is designed to communicate with frame-based (vector array) DACs - and not continuous data (audio) DACs.
I would love to support the output to continuous data (audio) DACs sometime in the future. Whether that is within Maxwell or a new application has not been determined yet.
At this moment, Maxwell only supports frame-based DACs - The ether dream is an example of a non-USB DAC - it connects through ethernet - but I believe what you are asking about is frame-based verse continuous data DACs - Maxwell operates in the points domain and therefore it is not possible to use continuous data DACs like audio DACs.
Are you using the Ethernet connection of the Ether Dream or the new USB connection? I don't currently have an Ether Dream 2 yet - but according to the Developer it should be directly compatible with the Ether Dream V1 as long as you are using the Ether Dream port.
If you are using the Ether Dream port, and it is not working, I will indeed investigate ASAP!
On the Mac, everything is simply just plug-n-play. There is no additional software you have to install other than Maxwell.
But just to be clear, here are the steps:
- Connect LaserDock to a USB port on your Mac
- Start Maxwell
- Choose "LaserDock" from the DAC TYPE dropdown in the Laser section of Maxwell (lower right corner).
Here is a screenshot of what the Laser section should look like:
This is the behavior you would get if Maxwell is unable to connect to the LaserDock. Most likely this is a driver install issue.
Wickedlasers has posted some driver install/fix instructions here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LaserDock/comments/57djk9...
Pasted here :
Download this http://zadig.akeo.ie/
- Connect laserdock
- Open zadig
- Choose Laserdock Interface 0
- Choose libusbK as driver
- Click install.
- Repeat 3-5 for interface 1 and 2
As bgovetas has mentioned, it is quite easy to accomplish this using Maxwell.
Here are some more in-depth instructions:
- OSC X - set to linear mode and increase the "amplitude" control to max
- OSC Y - set to the waveform type you would like to achieve and adjust amplitude to desired height
- Draw Mode: Select "blanking" to blank the output once the end of the frame is reached when looping back to the beginning
Hints:
Adjusting the "phase mod" of OSC Y will modulate the phase over time (make the shape move) - The amount applied adjust the rate at which the phase modulates (speed of change)
Very basic FM waveforms can be generated by the following:
Set the phase-offset inter-frame modulation type to LFO 1 and adjust the LFO 1 frequency to somewhere in the range of 0-4 and adjust the phase modulation of LFO 1 to taste.
I'll paste the answer from PL here for future reference:
1. To erase a learned control - first, turn on MIDI Learn Mode - then click on the control that you want to erase - it should turn green showing that it has an assignment. Simply shift-click on it again to erase the assignment.
2. For triggering the presets - you have to use Note On midi messages. There are two modes - Normal Mode (APC Trigger Mode is off), and APC Trigger Mode (APC Trigger Mode button is on).
For Normal Mode, the "Note Offset" number box specifies what MIDI Note # is assigned to the first preset (the preset in the top-left corner). MIDI Notes are then automatically assigned incrementally from left-to-right, top-to-bottom.
This doesn't work well with an APC 40 - as the MIDI Note numbers of the clip-launch buttons on an APC-40 start with MIDI Note # 0 in the bottom-left corner and increment from left-to-right, bottom-to-top. This note mapping is opposite of the "preset" numbers used by Maxwell, which is why there is an APC Trigger Mode - it takes care of this mapping automatically.
3. The waveform control can be controlled by a MIDI CC messages with data in the following range triggering each waveform type as so:
Sine: 0-32
Tri: 33-64
Square: 65-96
Line: 96-127
4. At the moment, there is no back-channel communication from Maxwell to a MIDI controller (except with the APC-40 Colorizer App included with Maxwell). If there is enough interest, I would like to add support for a MIDI controller like the APC-40mkii - but that is quite a large development effort.
Note about saved MIDI mappings: These are saved and loaded automatically on app close/open. The mapping files are located in the following location:
OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/Maxwell/
Windows: /user/Documents/
controllist.json
midimap.json
If you ever want to simply remove all MIDI mappings, you can just erase those two files.
It is quite easy to purchase in the EU (VAT will be added automatically).
Maxwell can be purchased through Paypal or through Stripe - but is handled automatically on the purchase page.
Simply go to the Maxwell homepage @:
https://bluefang.itch.io/maxwell
and select "Buy Now".
Once it has been purchased you will have access to a downloads page where you can download the app for your platform of choice.