Développé avec Berta.me

  1. The Pipo project

  2. IMPORTANT :  Pipo will be crowfunding on Crowd Supply, check out the >>> pre-launch page <<<

  3. Intro

    Pipo is a family of playfull control modules meant to easily build creative and reactive MIDI or OSC interfaces. They allow you to quickly turn motion, touch, distance, or any analog sensor into a creative controller. They are designed to easily connect with creative software for music, light, 3D, web, etc, to the physical world


    While proposing a plug an play approach to leave the space for creativity and not the setup, they are also entirely customisable for the seasoned creators.
    Their hardware design is meant to be flexible, so they can be used for a large variety of usages, from live performance, studio use, or embedded within installations, or just tinker on the bench.
    All modules can optionally be used wirelessly thanks to the onboard battery charger,and the Wifi and Bluetooth LE connectivity.

    The modules communicate through MIDI, OSC, and HID (mouse/keyboard), allowing easy connection with all softwares and operating systems.
    Modules are based on an Esp32-S3 chip and coded with PlatfromIO and Arduino framework, making them highly hackable.

    The modules also have a configuration web page hosted on the device itself you can access from any mobile or pc to adjust controls and mappings to your specific needs.

    Insta:  @pipo_interfaces

    Pipo Motion:

    It's a motion based controller, where 3D orientation, acceleration and taps are converted to notes, button press or continuous controls. It relies on a high performance 9-axis accelerometer (ICM-20948) for fast and accurate sensing.

    Pipo Range:

    It's a ditance-sensing controller. It can measure the distance of a hand, object, wall, person, etc.... It features a high performance ToF distance sensor VL53L4CX.
    The measurement range depends on the type of objects to detect. A hand is accurately tracked up to 1.5m, while a person or a wall can be tracked up to 4 to 5m.

    Pipo Analog:

    It's basically an analog Midi/OSC acquisition unit, to unleach creativity, quick experimentation, or prototyping !  Connect objects or sensors to turn them into controls.
    It has 2 types of inputs:

    • 6 capacitive touch inputs. They can be hookup to all kind of objects for touch detection. These can be used either in "on/off" mode, to trigger notes or button presses, or in continuous mode as proximity sensing.
    • 6 analog voltage inputs (distributed in 3 grove connectors - a standard for DIY electronics modules). These allow for the connection of all kind of analog sensors or voltage measurement. These inputs are protected for overvoltage, and the input range can be selected through a switch from 3.3 to 12V.

    Demos:

  5. A bit of background:
    After many years making interactive installations as a hobby, I realized a large portion of my time was always going into coding and building the custom electronics, and interfacing with PC was always a pain. As a result I could never spend as much time as I would have liked on the creative aspect, or the finetuning of my projects. 
    Hence I decided to start thinking on how to improve this whole situation. After a few months working on a intial prototype which was an "all-in-one box which can do everything" I realized usability was not that great: a bit too big to be embedded easily, most sensor were still wired, and it was just not the flexible solution I had in mind. So I started again from scratch and finaly came up with the current solution, a family of modules with a unified code base. Easy to use, flexible, small, and specialized !
    If the project meets a good launch, I reallly hope to be able to expand the family over time, (also with output modules). New modules will multiply the possibilities proposed by the current modules and hopefully provide a rich creative menu.