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Send Tweets with a Little Tikes piano

This project uses the Max fzero~ object to detect which key of the piano gets pressed and send a pre-written Tweet like “Signs point to yellow” based on the color of the key.

It works with the Internet sensors project that sends Tweets from Max using Ruby. https://reactivemusic.net/?p=7013

download

https://github.com/tkzic/internet-sensors

folder: twitter-ruby

instructions

  1. Follow instructions here to send Tweets using Max and Ruby: https://reactivemusic.net/?p=7013
  2. At this point you will have a Max patch open and a Ruby server running in a terminal window.
  3. Now open little-tikes.maxpat
  4. Carefully play individual tones on the Little Tikes piano. 

notes

fzero~ is probably not the best choice for this. It doesn’t work above 2500hz which means it won’t probably distinguish between the lowest and highest key which are an octave apart. In fact the Little-Tikes piano, for a pitched instrument, is difficult to analyze. Due to relatively equal weight of partials to fundamental, and the quick decay. Other choices, would be pitch~ (Jehan) fiddle~ (Pucket…)

I remember seeing an Arduino project where somebody did this in reverse – actually built a motorized striker to play the piano)

… insert link to video here…

 

Posted on

Tweet from Max with ruby

Update 6/2014: working version here: https://reactivemusic.net/?p=7013

notes

The zapier.com trigger method of sending tweets from Max is limited by number of tweets and sync rate. So it would be nice to set up another intermediary server program in ruby or php which eliminates the middle-man and just sends tweets directly.

Or you could use the mxj searchTweet program, which has been updated to do this on the search side.

twitter gem

update: Got it working with this gem: https://github.com/sferik/twitter. Its much easier than dealing with xively.

docs: http://rdoc.info/gems/twitter

how to destroy a tweet: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10640811/twitter-gem-how-to-get-the-id-of-a-new-tweet

how to get a timeline: http://bobbyprabowo.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/simple-twitter-gem-tutorial/

example of error handling code:

MAX_ATTEMPTS = 3
num_attempts = 0
begin
  num_attempts += 1
  retweets = Twitter.retweeted_by_user("sferik")
rescue Twitter::Error::TooManyRequests => error
  if num_attempts <= MAX_ATTEMPTS
    # NOTE: Your process could go to sleep for up to 15 minutes but if you
    # retry any sooner, it will almost certainly fail with the same exception.
    sleep error.rate_limit.reset_in
    retry
  else
    raise
  end
end

 

Another useful SO post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16618037/twitter-rate-limit-hit-while-requesting-friends-with-ruby-gem/16620639#16620639