written by: fourcheeze
Sad to hear that it hasn't worked out well when you've let on too much to the community. I'm not really familiar with that kind of situation, because most of the development I do is for bespoke web applications for particular customers where the direction is laid down by the customer, but all the tools we use are open source where generally the status of things is transparent.I have not used my Pico in a long time because whether on Mac or PC, it's just not portable enough to be of any use. However, if there was to be a iPad EigenD app, that would be a game changer.
I would like to know if Eigenlabs has any plans of porting EigenD over to iPad in the VERY near future? If not, I will sell my Pico since I will simply NEVER use it.
Mike
Hi Mike,
At the risk of pre-empting a formal response, you're right that this would be a killer app, but I'd be amazed if it happened in the near future. Eigenlabs are planning to release an iOS version of Stage at some point; this will allow you to control EigenD over a network, but not run a version of EigenD in its own right. I'd imagine that, aside from processing power constraints, the technical challenge of interfacing a bespoke piece of hardware like the Pico to the iPad would be significant.
Cheers,
Mark.
FYI: The iPad is not much smaller than a laptop.
FYI: The iPad is not much smaller than a laptop.
Hi Mike
We're not likely to produce an EigenD for IOS in the near future, for a number of reasons. The first couple are technical, and not something we can do much about, the others are really just about resources and choosing what to do next.
The first reason is that the iPAD does not provide enough power in USB host mode for a Pico. The iPAD (to the best of my knowledge, not sure about the new version but this was certainly true for the first two) only supports low power USB devices (less than 100mA) and the Pico needs the high power specification to operate, it's just not possible to have it run on that little current due to the sensor technology. You could run a Pico but only by using a powered hub, which kind of removes all the advantages of an iPAD over a lightweight laptop (I'm typing this on a Macbook Air, which really isn't that much heavier than an iPAD and in the little version, not much larger either). I can't really see someone bothering to strap a powered hub, power supply (and probably mains cable) etc to themselves just to be able to use their tablet.
The second reason is the available CPU and memory is low on these devices, low enough that one would only be able to run light weight setups. This isn't the end of the world, but the setup compatibility issues and slew of complaints this will generate (and it really does not matter what we say about this, the reality is that people would expect to be able to make setups on their laptop and run them on an iPAD and even figuring out if they would run when moved is very non trivial - its never likely to be a seamless experience) does not fill me with the joy.
All the rest of the reasons are resource issues for us. If we're going to look at another platform for basic EigenD support then it'll probably be Andorid next. Not only would an Android port work on a wide variety of devices rather than just one from one vendor but it would as a collateral advantage give us Linux support. Given the current growth in extremely low cost, surprisingly high performance (check out the Raspberry Pi if you want to know what I'm talking about) Android and Linux devices I think that this market has great promise, particularly in the educational and student market. Not to mention that one can buy an Android tablet at a fraction of the cost of an iPAD, not an insignificant issue for a broke musician.
None of this is to say that at some point an IOS EigenD is not possible, it's just that it doesn't look terribly interesting or worthwhile as yet. The hardware and technical issues may well go away with newer versions of the iPAD, batteries get better, CPU's faster and memory larger all the time. We may make an IOS version at some point when all this looks more viable, just not right now.
John
I look forward to an android port with great enthusiasm. Does this means there's a linux branch of the drivers? The last time I looked at it, it was a case of rolling your own drivers, and I don't really have the time for that !
No, there is no current Linux branch. Feel free to start one though - it's probably not that hard, the main issue is getting the low latency from the USB system. We used to have an operable Linux branch, but changes in the kernel USB stuff several years broke it and we've never had time to go back and rewrite.
John
I had a look through the open source code about a year ago, and as you say, it probably isn't so much work, but unfortunately I don't even get enough time to get good on my Tau at the moment without taking on a development project as well.
However it would be nice to be able to see which things are being worked on. Do you have something like Trac up and running where ordinary people can look?
We use Redmine internally, but it's some work to make it publicly available and right now I'd rather that work went straight into EigenD. We have discussed making it public though, so it might happen at some point, at least for the bug tracker part of it. We probably wouldn't make new feature development part of that though. We've been roundly punished by our community so many times for disclosing what we're working on or what we're thinking of working on that I'm afraid we've got more Apple like in our approach and do try and avoid too much forward mention of anything. It's a bit sad but it does turn out that in general people aren't very good at dealing with open discussion of the future - a 'we may do this' turns into 'we will release that next month' and a 'we'd like to do this' turns into 'we will do this' just as soon as the words are spoken. This does unfortunately reduce the opportunity for open debate, but I guess that's just how it is.
If you are interested in working on the open source part of EigenD (which is in fact most of it) with a view to a Linux port at any point and do want a tracker for features and issues connected with it, lease let us know and we'll set something up.
John
Sad to hear that it hasn't worked out well when you've let on too much to the community. I'm not really familiar with that kind of situation, because most of the development I do is for bespoke web applications for particular customers where the direction is laid down by the customer, but all the tools we use are open source where generally the status of things is transparent.
I suppose I long for a world where I can grab open source bits and pieces from here and there and shove them together to make music. I'm not sure how a company is supposed to make a business model out of that though.
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