TouchOSC

Hope you all enjoyed this evening's quick run-thru on controls.  I think you'll find that while there are innumerable things that can be controlled, many elements of your designs may not need them.  I think there's also a mode where you have granular control of every aspect of a piece of media while you're developing content and looks, and then there may need to be a whole other mapping that is geared toward playback/performance.

And as we saw during the demo, MadMapper has made adding controls pretty painless.  If anyone has a PS3/4 controller laying around, I'd love to see an effort made to hook up an analog joystick to the lighting controls for the 360 project in the atrium…

Here's the webpage with links to the app store and the editor download about halfway down the page.  There's decent instructions on how to sync a custom layout.  Essentially, if you have TouchOSC communication with mad mapper, it's pretty easy to upload any layouts you have designed.

http://hexler.net/software/touchosc

Full disclosure, the TouchOSC layout builder app (java file) is pretty juvenile.  It lacks polish, and is not particularly well optimized, in my opinion.  That said it does function just fine, and once you get the hang of it, customizing layouts for an iPod or iPad is pretty elementary.  You will discover, I think, that when you're working out spacing and whatnot, you'll end up with a lot of dead references to controls that you didn't use.  Haven't noticed that it costs anything with regard to response or speed, just think it would be nice if the program went back through and re-numbered the controls that "make the cut" to streamline the final product.

One other note:
Some of the drop down menu type things in MadMapper are difficult for TouchOSC, or maybe MIDI in general, to deal with.  One case that comes to mind is the drop down of line chase types.  There's not really an appropriate built-in control for that, but you could "hard-code" an array of buttons to recall each type of chase.  I've considered making a custom rotary knob as an option, but that seemed like more trouble than it was worth, when you consider that more often that not once the line chase pattern is picked, it's unlikely to change.

Happy Coding!