Use Your iPad and Kinect Control DMX Lighting Using the TUIO Protocol

TUIO: Enable Multi-Touch Interfaces to Control your Lighting

TUIO stands for Table-Top User Interfaces Objects and is becoming the standard protocol used by all kind of exotic multi-touch devices. It's a network protocol over OSC which is another more general way to exchange data. Multi-touch interfaces like the iPad and the Kinect offer extraordinary new ways for human and lighting interactions. Users are really amazed by these new interactive tables and image recognition devices.

Here's a permanent installation made for a new fitness center. The staff uses an iPad to remotely control many parameters and adjust the mood. There are 4 chauvet legend 412z, 27 chauvet color band pix and over 1500 RGB LEDs. Designed by Daniel Schaeffer.

Experimentation with a Kinect to control the pan of a moving light. A Wiimote is used to change the tilt, color and intensity.

Kinect

Thanks to the amazing developers of the OpenKinect community and to Ryan Webber for creating the Kinect2share application. Alternatively, you can look at the OSCeleton app to send the whole skeleton via OSC (use the -q option to send messages compatible with Lightjams). With these Windows apps you'll be able to output TUIO or OSC with your Kinect device and hook it to Lightjams. Tons of fun ahead!

Up to 16 Cursors

Cursors represents active touches on the table-top interface. You may not have enough hands for this, but hey, you sure have friends willing to help you.

Up to 128 Objects

Objects have an id, a position and a rotation angle. Based on the id, you can trigger different lighting effects. Really cool.

Based on the OSC Protocol: Perfect for Inter-Application Communication

TUIO is based on the OSC protocol so you can use any OSC enabled application to send data to Lightjams.

See the www.tuio.org website for more information about TUIO.

Walkthrough

1. Global Configuration

Access the TUIO/OSC configuration by going to View/Configuration.

Lightjams automatically starts listening for TUIO/OSC messages at startup.

Network: You can change the default UDP TUIO port, which is 3333 and the network adapter if you have multiple. If you listen to OSC messages coming from an application running on the same computer, you can use the special loop-back adapter (127.0.0.1).

2. Link to any slider

Select any slider and click on the TUIO/OSC icon. Then you'll be able to play with all TUIO/OSC settings.

3. Play

Use the drop down control to select whether you want TUIO cursors or objects. Just click any TUIO value on the right side to select it.

Cursors: For each cursor, you see whether it is active (on), and its x and y position. A cursor represents a touch and its ID correspond to the order of appearance.

Objects: For each object, you see whether it is active (on), its x and y position and a rotation angle.

The "on" value is handy to activate/deactivate effects based on the presence of an item. For example: You can make a lighting parameter follow your finger on an iPad but only when your finger is actually pressed.

Idea box

Give the lighting crew an iPad or iPhone and see what happen. Use your iPhone as a remote control for your DMX lighting. Create an amazing motion activated store display with the Kinect: Totally affordable. Just dance in front of your Kinect!

What's next? Try Lightjams for free!