Fingerplay & Control

Thought I'd write a little about what's going on in the development branch of Fingerplay. So what's new compared to the Market version? Well, at the moment, the dev branch is still the only place to get a build with sensor support (there's still work to be done before prime time). In addition, I've just finished a little feature that sends the maximum values for all widgets in the loaded layout. The idea is to make it easier to use custom layouts - eg. I've made a module for vvvv that listens to incoming OSC messages and automatically creates an input module from them. The same "OSC learn" idea could be implemented in many applications.
Speaking of custom layouts, there is now the option to convert layouts made with touchOSC editor to the FingerplayMIDI format.

I've also done a little coding on Control , another MIDI/OSC control app. The main differences to FingerPlay:

• It's multiplatform (using Phonegap for platform-to-JavaScript bindings)
• It uses JSON for interface files instead of XML
• It can load new interfaces from any URL 

Intro to Control: Free MIDI / OSC software for iOS from charlie roberts on Vimeo.

So right now, they're pretty much neck to neck, but I'd like to see development from the various platform-specific apps gradually move towards a cooperative, omniplatform effort. There are currently some drawbacks as not all useful native APIs have been exposed, but it's getting there.

BookMooch Android app, with Android Scripting Environment

 Direct download link to ASE

Inspired by this LibraryThing script, I made a python script for  Android Scripting Environment that reads ISBN codes from bar codes and adds books to my BookMooch. Basically, ASE lets you access Android APIs in many scripting languages (supported interpreters include Lua, BeanShell, Python, Perl, JRuby, Tcl, JavaScript, Ruby, etc). What makes this experiment, and ASE, interesting, is the possibility for rapid development of impromptu apps like this (the script is 6 lines long). Best of all, it's entirely possible to put a hack together directly on the device - ASE comes with an integrated API browser to better facilitate this.

As Matt Katz, author of the LibraryDroid script, put it:

That’s the openness I’m talking about. No approvals, because the phone is mine, not Google’s or Apple’s. I love it.

Now contrast this with

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited). 

Fingerplay revisited

Earlier, I made a vvvv module for FingerplayMIDI, the Android MIDI controller app. Fingerplay is great fun, but I wished it had support for the Android Sensor API. After the source code was released, myself and visy decided to have a go.
Here is the result (hosted on Github for the time being). I also updated the vvvv module. Note that Fingerplay now support custom layouts. This module was built only with the default layout in mind (I don't know if there is currently a way to find out about the current layout on the server side...).

vvvv module for FingerplayMIDI

I made a vvvv module for FingerplayMIDI, the Android MIDI controller app. You can download it here.
There is now an advanced version available, by the vvvv vvvveteran kalle. This version has better structure, and supports multiple instances (so you can theoretically have several Fingerplay clients connected to your server, each controlling different things). I've yet to try if FingerplayServer supports this, but I will update this post when I have!