rePatcher
About the rePatcher Shield
The rePatcher Shield gives you a hardware interface to control your Pure Data and MAX/MSP patches as if they were old-skool analog modular synthesizers. The rePatcher Shield attaches to an Arduino compatible board, and gives you 6 potentiometers for 10b data input, and a 6 x 6 patchbay matrix. The data streams over USB, and easily integrates into MAX/MSP and Pure Data via a special patch (linked below).
Setup Instructions
To use the rePatcher board, first be sure that you have the appropriate USB drivers installed for your Arduino board. These come with the Arduino programming environment and must be loaded for your Arduino to work. Next, load the Arduino sketch linked below, and attach the rePatcher shield. Finally, download the appropriate (Pure Data or MAX/MSP) rePatcher patches and place them in the folder you will be executing out of. For Pure Data on a PC this is C:\Program Files\pd\.
Use Instructions
There are 6 inputs and 12 outputs on the rePatcher object. The 6 audio inputs on the top send their signals to the corresponding 6 OUT's on the rePatcher board. These signals can then be wired and sent to the 6 IN's on the board, which correspond to the first 6 audio out's on the rePatcher object. Multiple OUT's can be wired to a single IN, and all of the OUT's will sum at this junction. Do not wire OUT's to other OUT's, or IN's to other IN's, as this will just confuse the matrix. The final 6 outputs on the rePatcher object are control out's for the 6 MOD potentiometers on the rePatcher board. These are sequential, 0 to 5, from left to right, just like the IN's and OUT's.
There are 4 user input boxes within the rePatcher object. You will want to click on the list_devices box first. This will list all the attached devices, and allow you to find the COM port that your Arduino board is attached to. Next, enter this number into the port_number box, and click on the open/close button. This should open the connection to your Arduino. Finally, wait a few seconds, and click on the start/stop button. This should start the data flowing. If it does not, click the button a few more times, as it sometimes takes a bit for the USB port to make the connection.
The start/stop button can be used during performance to hold the current state of the rePatcher board while you create a new patch. clicking the button again will make the wiring and pot values live again, and the patch will quickly snap to the new settings.
Note: If you are routing the output of the rePatcher object back to its input, you will need to use send~ and receive~ objects, otherwise your patch will not function. This incorporates a 1 sample delay, keeping the patch from feeding back on itself. check out the Pure Data rePatcher Test Patch 2 above for an example of this.
Documentation
Files: Version 1.0
