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  • Wii mote drums thoughts

    Hello camille and the forum.

    I just attended the midi hack in Stockholm this weekend and i brought up an old idea to be able to drum using my wii motes.

    I got it to work and all, but i want it to be fairly playable which as of now, it isn't.

    Sofar, this is how it works.

    The yaw alters a knob in ableton that selects witch sample is supposed to be played, this is so that i can play different drums from left to right, like a drum set.
    So far this works so-so, BUT that's something for later tweaking.
    button B enables accel, which is a note.

    This works "fine", all though the Yaw seems a bit edgy, but as mentioned, that's more of a tweaking thing, which i'll deal with later.

    But i want to be able to have velocity, i feel like i've tried it all, am i missing something, or is velocity for the accel param not possible?

    Also, is there any way to get X-Y-Z data with out using accels? one idea i had was that when i was at a specific height, another drum could be played, like a cymbal.

    Suggestions greatly received.

    Thanks in advance.
    Johannes Drakenberg - Artist
    - Facebook - Soundcloud - Tour Dates - Youtube -

  • #2
    Hi Johannes!

    This sounds like cool experimentations

    When using /wii/1/accel/... based events, the attitude angle values (pitch, roll, yaw) are computed from the accelerometer sensors.

    The accelerometers are measuring the acceleration on the three axis X, Y and Z, and by doing basic trigonometry, we can deduce an estimation of the attitude angles. For example yaw is calculated by measuring the angle between the X and the Y accelerometers.

    If you try to shake the Wiimote randomly, you will see that those measurements do not give you a precise measure of the angles at any time. In fact this is only true when the Wiimote does not move too much.

    So using the yaw angle to select a drum sound is OK as long as you do not shake the Wiimote, but as soon as you start a "hit" gesture to trigger the sound, the yaw angle gets corrupted, which is why you found difficult to use it as the instrument you expect.

    Now, you could instead use the MotionPlus based events (if you Wiimote has MotionPlus capability) because they are computed from gyroscope sensors. Gyroscopes are not sensitive to accelerations (translation movement), and thus are better suited for orientation measuring. But there is a downside as well: they are subject to drift, and for a period of time long enough you will notice that the orientation calibration starts to drift away from its initial value.

    Also, is there any way to get X-Y-Z data with out using accels? one idea i had was that when i was at a specific height, another drum could be played, like a cymbal.
    Unfortunately this would require a complex fusion of both accelerometers and gyroscopes data, which OSCulator tries to achieve for orientation only, with limited success. The first issue is that the spec of the Wiimote sensors is not entirely known (this is a proprietary product), and I don't have the mathematical model to implement this feature properly as it has been done in Nintendo games.


    Best,
    Camille

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    • #3
      Hello and thank you for your fast reply!

      Yes indeed, last time i did it, i got it to work, but not to be playable, this time i am going to make it happen

      I do have the motion plus motes (original ones) but they are still affected from the accel, i only see Yaw under the access tab and the motion angles, oh and angular velocities.

      I set smoothing of access to 50%
      Motion plus to 100%

      I use Cyclic mode, infinite mode seems to work better for the wii drums, but it doesn't work with the original setup (traktor mappings) as cycle mode works the best for that purpose.

      As of now, the yaw drifts towards one direction as i hit, i tried to duplicate the yaw, make it the same midi message and then invert the values, but it hasn't really gone well, still trying to find the perfect value for it.

      One thing i did was to have button b disable yaw, so when i was hitting a sound, yaw wouldn't move around. Another way is to have different buttons allow for different notes, but that is in a way back-wards thinking and kind of limiting.

      If the yaw would just be stable, everything would be perfect.

      You say motion plus is more stable but can drift, i have no problem resetting motion-plus every now and then.
      Johannes Drakenberg - Artist
      - Facebook - Soundcloud - Tour Dates - Youtube -

      Comment


      • #4
        Sounds like you are on track.

        If the yaw would just be stable, everything would be perfect.
        This would be possible only if the IR sensors were used in addition to the accelerometer + gyroscopes fusion process, but I decided that using the IR should not be a requirement because of the problems you could have during a live performance.

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        • #5
          Is there a way to script the yaw to go right, that would compensate for it going left.

          In reality it only really matters what ableton gets, hmm. perhaps more tweaking is the way to go.

          It's weird that inverting the yaw's values still drifts, the drift should in theory stop, as the drift that makes it go left, should also make it go right?
          Johannes Drakenberg - Artist
          - Facebook - Soundcloud - Tour Dates - Youtube -

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          • #6
            Oh, and can "cap" help me in any way? I never really understood what it does
            Johannes Drakenberg - Artist
            - Facebook - Soundcloud - Tour Dates - Youtube -

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            • #7
              In the Scalings Page, the Cap options tells whether the input value should be "capped" – that is, bounded – to the Input Min and Input Max values.

              Therefore if Input Min = -1 and Input Max = 1, and with Cap enabled, the Output will always be within the range [Output Min, Output Max].

              Otherwise, if Cap is disabled, then the values is free to be scaled outside of this range.

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              • #8
                In the Scalings Page, the Cap options tells whether the input value should be "capped" – that is, bounded – to the Input Min and Input Max values.

                Therefore if Input Min = -1 and Input Max = 1, and with Cap enabled, the Output will always be within the range [Output Min, Output Max].

                Otherwise, if Cap is disabled, then the values is free to be scaled outside of this range.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Ok, Thank you.

                  I just noticed, that even if i my duplicate yaws are completely opposite, they still drift towards the same way, logically they should "smooth" each other out, but now they are moving the same way, and ableton can't have two messages mapped to the same knob. Hmmm, if i can just get around this, things will be relative simple. any suggestions?
                  Johannes Drakenberg - Artist
                  - Facebook - Soundcloud - Tour Dates - Youtube -

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    I am sorry Johannes, but I don't understand, this seems very specific to your configuration.

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