Tutorials

• Intro
• C
• C++
• C#
• Python
• Java
• Max
• Pd

Getting started with libmapper and Max

Note: this tutorial will introduce the revised bindings for MaxMSP (July 2013). You can access the tutorial for the original bindings using the [mapper] object here.

To start using the libmapper with MaxMSP you will need to:

• Download the external objects from our downloads page. Alternatively, you can build the object from source instead.
• Download a graphical user interface for creating and editing mapping connections.

Devices

Creating a device

To create a libmapper device, create an object called [map.device] with an optional argument specifying the device's name. There is a brief initialization period after a device is created where a unique ordinal is chosen to append to the device name. This allows multiple devices with the same name to exist on the network. If no name is given libmapper will choose a name for your device starting with the string "maxmsp".

Your device will start with no inputs or outputs, so it will not yet show up in most GUIs.

You can also provide arbitrary properties to your device using jitter-style properties. By default, libmapper will try to guess which network interface to use for mapping, defaulting to the local loopback interface if ethernet or wifi is not available. You can force the object to use a particular interface by using the @interface property.

An example of creating a device:

Once the object has initialized, it will output its metadata from its outlet:

• The complete device name, including an appended ordinal for distinguishing between multiple active devices with the same name.
• The IP address and port in use by the object.
• The number of input and output signals associated with the object (none to start).
• The network interface in use by the object.

If and when this information changes, the object will output the updated property.

Multiple devices

Once you have created a [map.device] object in a patcher, it considers itself to be the "parent" device for that patcher and all of its subpatchers. This means that it you try to create a second copy of the device in the same patcher, or in one of its child subpatchers, the object instantiation will fail. When the object is created, it checks whether there is a pre-existing device that would cause a conflict.

You can, however, create multiple [map.device] objects in the same patch as long as they are both contained in different subpatchers.

Signals

Now that we have created a device, we only need to know how to add signals in order to give our program some input/output functionality. While libmapper enables arbitrary connections between any declared signals, we still find it helpful to distinguish between two type of signals: inputs and outputs.

• outputs signals are sources of data, updated locally by their parent device
• inputs signals are consumers of data and are not generally updated locally by their parent device.

This can become a bit confusing, since the "reverb" parameter of a sound synthesizer might be updated locally through user interaction with a GUI, however the normal use of this signal is as a destination for control data streams so it should be defined as an input signal. Note that this distinction is to help with GUI organization and user-understanding – libmapper enables connections from input signals and to output signals if desired.

Creating a signal

Creating input and output signals is accomplished with the [map.in] and [map.out] objects, which requires two pieces of information:

• a name for the signal
• the signal's data type expressed as a character 'i' for integer, 'f' for float

A third optional integer argument sets the signal's vector length, if it is omitted the signal is assumed to have length 1. Additional signal properties can also (optionally) be added:

• the signal's unit, e.g. @unit Hz
• the signal's minimum value, e.g. @min 0
• the signal's maximum value, e.g. @max 100

examples:

The only required parameters here are the signal name and data type, but the more information you provide, the more the mapper can do some things automatically. For example, if minimum and maximum are provided, it will be possible to create linear-scaled connections very quickly. If unit is provided, the mapper will be able to similarly figure out a linear scaling based on unit conversion. (Centimeters to inches for example.) Currently automatic unit-based scaling is not a supported feature, but will be added in the future. You can take advantage of this future development by simply providing unit information whenever it is available. It is also helpful documentation for users.

An example of a float signal where some more information is provided:

So far we know how to create a device and to specify an output signal for it.

Updating signals

We can imagine the above program getting sensor information in a loop. It could be running on a computer and reading data from an Arduino over a USB serial port, or it could just be a mouse-controlled GUI slider. However it's getting the data, it must provide it to libmapper so that it will be sent to other devices if that signal is mapped.

This is accomplished by passing ints or floats to the [map.out] object. In the case of vector signals, a list with the same number of elements should be used.

So in the "sensor 1 voltage" example, assuming that we have some code which reads sensor 1's value into a float variable in [p read_sensor], the patch becomes:

This is about all that is needed to expose sensor 1's voltage to the network as a mappable parameter. The libmapper GUI can now be used to create a mapping between this value and a receiver, where it could control a synthesizer parameter or change the brightness of an LED, or whatever else you want to do.

Signal conditioning

Most synthesizers of course will not know what to do with "voltage"--it is an electrical property that has nothing to do with sound or music. This is where libmapper really becomes useful.

Scaling or other signal conditioning can be taken care of before exposing the signal, or it can be performed as part of the mapping. Since the end user can demand any mathematical operation be performed on the signal, he can perform whatever mappings between signals as he wishes.

As a developer, it is therefore your job to provide information that will be useful to the end user.

For example, if sensor 1 is a position sensor, instead of publishing "voltage", you could convert it to centimeters or meters based on the known dimensions of the sensor, and publish a "/sensor1/position" signal instead, providing the unit information as well.

We call such signals "semantic", because they provide information with more meaning than a relatively uninformative value based on the electrical properties of the sensing technique. Some sensors can benefit from low-pass filtering or other measures to reduce noise. Some sensor data may need to be combined in order to derive physical meaning. What you choose to expose as outputs of your device is entirely application-dependent.

You can even publish both "/sensor1/position" and "/sensor1/voltage" if desired, in order to expose both processed and raw data. Keep in mind that these will not take up significant processing time, and zero network bandwidth, if they are not mapped.

Receiving signals

Receiving signals is even easier: create a [map.in] object with a name and type, and updates for this signal will be routed to its outlet. The arguments for the [map.in] object are identical to [map.out].

Let's try making two devices in the same patch for testing.

If you use your mapping GUI to create a link between the two devices sender and receiver and a connection between your two signals /sendsig and /recvsig, any change made to the float value on the left will cause a corresponding output on the right.

Congratulations - you have created your first mapping connection! This probably seems quite simplistic, since you could have made a patch-cord between the two float objects and accomplished the same thing, but your "mapping" represents something more:

• It can be edited remotely from another machine on the network.
• It can connect signals on different computers.
• It can connect different signals implemented in different programming languages such as C, C++, Python, Java, and SuperCollider.
• It can be edited to provide signal processing, including automatic linear scaling, calibration, muting, clipping, or an arbitrary expression - even FIR and IIR filters.

Publishing metadata

Things like device names, signal units, and ranges, are examples of metadata — information about the data you are exposing on the network.

libmapper also provides the ability to specify arbitrary extra metadata in the form of name-value pairs. These are not interpreted by libmapper in any way, but can be retrieved over the network. This can be used for instance to label a device with its location, or to perhaps give a signal some property like "reliability", or some category like "light", "motor", "shaker", etc.

Some GUI could then use this information to display information about the network in an intelligent manner.

Any time there may be extra knowledge about a signal or device, it is a good idea to represent it by adding such properties, which can be of any OSC-compatible type. (So, numbers and strings, etc.)

The MaxMSP bindings for libmapper do not currently allow dynamically changing the properties of a device or signal, however they can be declared when the entity is created by using jitter-style property arguments

For example, to store a float indicating the X position of a device dev, you could instantiate your object like this:

To specify a string property of a signal:

Reserved keys

You can use any property name not already reserved by libmapper.