A color grid you can carry in one hand, with physical controls and full RGB – and the option of wireless and batteries, so you can walk around while adjusting lights or projection?
Oh, and it’s modifiable, available fully made or as a kit, and completely open source hardware?
Yeah, that sounds about perfect.
On Create Digital Music, I describe my visit to Barcelona and a look at the Bhoreal project’s progress, as it wraps up its crowdfunding campaign:
Bhoreal Makes Grids Color, Open, Controls Robots and Lasers; Final Hours of Funding
But what struck me is how useful the system was integrating with a DMX laser system and a remote-controlled robot and Processing. The potentials for visualization and live and interactive visuals seem striking here, and the simple, monome-style grid also fits visual applications nicely in a way that music-specific controllers sometimes do not.
And … wireless. Yes, it’s fantastic that the crowd funding will support completing production with batteries and wireless.
Both the laser system and the robot are worth their own stories; we’ll look at them here on CDM tomorrow.
In the meantime, if you want to skip my rambling and get your ticket on this ride:
http://goteo.org/project/bhoreal/
But what is the difference with Monome?
Despite outward appearances, the engineering is different: it purports to have an entirely different circuit board (one that might be more adaptable to non-grid projects), new firmware, and different features (HID bootloader, wireless operation, etc.)
And, of course, RGB, which means some different visual control solutions that require color.