the robotcowboy unit daemon
a device event to osc bridge daemon and associated tools
Copyright (c) Dan Wilcox 2007, 2010
The rc-unitd package contains the following parts:
- rc-unitd - device event daemon
- rc-unit-notifier - insert/removal notification tool
- lsjs - joystick info tool
This group of tools allows any osc-capable program to receive joystick event data aka button presses, axis movements, etc. Specific joysticks can be mapped by name to specific osc send addresses. A notification tool can control the running daemon.
A udev rules set is provided for GNU/Linux to enable automatic notificaiton when devices are plugged in.
These tools are developed for the robotcowboy project, a wearable computer music system using Pure Data in GNU/Linux. See http://robotcowboy.com
The following libraries are required:
- SDL
- liblo (lightweight osc)
On Max OS X, they can be installed using macports: http://macports.org
- install the macport binary and setup the macports environment
- go to the Terminal and install the libs:
sudo port install libsdl liblo
As this is an GNU autotools project, simply run:
./configure make sudo make install
This readme, example config files, and the pd library are also installed to your doc dir, something like $(prefix)/share/doc/rc-unitd.
By default, the configure script installs to /usr/local. To change this behavior, specify a new dir before building the project:
./configure --prefix=/path/to/install/dir
If using macports on Mac OS X, it is recommended to use the macports default prefix of /opt/local.
All applications have a full help usage printout, use -h or --help.
% rc-unitd config_file.xml
Starts device daemon using the given config file. The config file sets the osc connection information as well as device to osc address mappings. Look at the example_config.xml file installed to the doc folder for details.
See the pd patches in the pd folder for info on how to communicate with rc-unitd.
Note: Values set on the commandline override those in the config file.
% lsjs
The lsjs tool lists the names of currently plugged in joysticks, which you can then use to create your device mappings.
% rc-unit-notifier
Used to control a running rc-unitd. Can be used to signal device add or removals as well as send a quit command.
There is a udev rule file for Linux installed to the doc dir that can be used to automatically call rc-unit-notifier when a joystick device is plugged/unplugged.
A Premake4 script and IDE files can be found in the prj folder. Premake4 can generate the IDE files from a given lua script. Download Premake4 from http://industriousone.com/premake.
Make sure the externals are built by calling the prj/setupbuild script which runs configure and calls make in the externals dir.
You can enable a debug build using:
./configure --enable-debug
I develop using an IDE, then update the autotools files when the sources are finished. I run make dist-check to make sure the distributable package can be built successfully.
- re-add wiimote support using a cross platform library
- multiple osc send addresses for event forwarding between multiple machines
- make a systray applet for gui control of rc-unitd ala qtjackctl->jackd
- add built in osc -> MIDI and other mapping capability (ala junXion or Osculator)