Design concepts for the successor of the Sense/Stage MiniBee

On these pages we present our design concepts for the new device and the accompanying firmware, software, and the new documentation pages.

  • Target Audience

    Our target audience consists of artists and students, people who want to make interactive works, but do not have a lot of experience with electronics or (low-level) firmware programming.

  • Design Overview

    The basic setup for the system consists of a base station and wireless nodes to which the wireless nodes can connect. The base station connects to a user’s laptop and is interfaced via a website hosted on the base station.

  • Base Station

    When you connect the base station via USB to your computer, it will show up as a network device - you can then browse to it with your webbrowser to manage your wireless nodes.

  • Wireless Node

    Node and receiver node are the same hardware - so just one board design.

  • Antenna considerations

    • the wireless node will have an option to attach an external antenna
    • for the base station there will be a standard antenna available (like on your Wifi router)
    • or you can attach a BNC cable so you can place your antenna at the most suitable spot, e.g. high up in the air.
    • another possibility is a parabolic antenna, so you can focus on your stage area

  • Firmware

    The firmware can be used on three different levels:

    • basis - basic functionality, which will support the most common use-cases
    • intermediate - customisation via templates: to support common special sensors, without the need to manually write firmware
    • expert - API to firmware library to make your own custom code for the nodes

  • Software

    The software bridge does the following things:

    • talks via a serial interface with a wireless node
    • manages the configuration of the nodes (config file load/save; osc update)
    • communication interface to other programs: standard OSC
    • communication interface to other programs: optional MIDI or HID - this would need to enable a feature on the USB device interface

  • Documentation structure

    The documentation pages will have two main categories: one related to the Sense/Stage MiniBee and one to the new wireless device.