Same as it ever was: if you want a touch controller, or a mobile controller of your own design, the easy default answer is simple. It’s TouchOSC. And today’s little bump-update is a good time to talk about it again.
TouchOSC was first serious solution for making your own control surfaces when Apple introduced apps for its then-new iPhone. More recently, it’s gotten a complete next-generation update with GPU acceleration and integrated editor. And it now runs just about everywhere: iPhone and iPad, but also Raspberry Pi, Linux, Windows touch devices, and Android. Heck… Wacom tablets?! It’s perfect for music, but also live visuals and other media gigs.
A lot of the utility of TouchOSC is also down to its dedicated community, powerful scripting, and tons of example patches. It’s not even limited to touch – if you like having physical controls, it also natively supports game controllers on both desktop and mobile. Want to mix some touch iPhone widgets with a Nintendo Switch controller, like in the pic? No problem at all.
The example content and scripting is a good reason to mention it today, as it gets some key updates. There’s a new Time & Battery example layout. There are scripting improvements, including how to handle timeouts on long-running scripts, plus various fixes. Zeroconf – the often archaic underpinnings of how network connections work – have apparently been massively refactored, which is a job I do not envy and is well worth paying for. (I … speak from experience. Thar be dragons in Zeroconf.)
Hexler’s TouchOSC site has everything you need and it also a fantastic resource:
Funny enough, Hexler is also one of the first people I met when I came to Germany; I think we’re long overdue for a reunion of him and some of the other folks from the early mobile music dev scene.
There are some really deep guides to TouchOSC online, too; here’s a little taste:
Plus some of the more leftfield stuff cats are doing with it – and yeah, dear readers, feel free to send stuff in that you’re working on!
Kate, I totally love your Gender Bender!