Golan Levin

I'm gonna keep a small diary of my reverse engineering work in this thread. Basically, I'm finding obsolete, poorly documented, and/or poorly supported sensing devices, and getting them to produce legible open data for my Creative Coding and Experimental Capture students.

As a postscript, I feel obliged to mention that cracking the Morph involved disassembling a Windows binary, and that I don't know shit about how to do that. As conflicted as I am about AI, part of my wonder here is how it can help us recover what's slipping away, instead of recycling what isn't.

I'm gonna keep a small diary of my reverse engineering work in this thread. Basically, I'm finding obsolete, poorly documented, and/or poorly supported sensing devices, and getting them to produce legible open data for my Creative Coding and Experimental Capture students.

I'm increasingly interested in how reverse engineering can be a form of cultural stewardship. Every abandoned instrument, sensor, or HID controller contains knowledge that can disappear long before the hardware itself fails.

I'm gonna keep a small diary of my reverse engineering work in this thread. Basically, I'm finding obsolete, poorly documented, and/or poorly supported sensing devices, and getting them to produce legible open data for my Creative Coding and Experimental Capture students.

The Morph is one of the most expressive pressure-sensing interfaces ever made. Unfortunately, Sensel effectively abandoned its SDK by 2020. Even worse, they used closed-source decompression code in its USB protocol. As operating systems evolved, the Morph was effectively condemned to become e-waste.

I'm gonna keep a small diary of my reverse engineering work in this thread. Basically, I'm finding obsolete, poorly documented, and/or poorly supported sensing devices, and getting them to produce legible open data for my Creative Coding and Experimental Capture students.

I'm thrilled to announce another liberated device: A fully open-source interface to the remarkable Sensel Morph touchpad (2017), featuring OSC, Syphon, and WebSocket transport in both Processing and Python. github.com/CreativeInqu...

I'm gonna keep a small diary of my reverse engineering work in this thread. Basically, I'm finding obsolete, poorly documented, and/or poorly supported sensing devices, and getting them to produce legible open data for my Creative Coding and Experimental Capture students.

Ha. Good new stuff in the oven.

I'm gonna keep a small diary of my reverse engineering work in this thread. Basically, I'm finding obsolete, poorly documented, and/or poorly supported sensing devices, and getting them to produce legible open data for my Creative Coding and Experimental Capture students.

I first learned about the GameTrak from @rebeccafiebrink.bsky.social around 2016? in one of her influential Wekinator workshops. Rebecca has cut the path for demonstrating how expressive controllers like the GameTrak, coupled with machine learning, can serve musical inclusion and exploration.

I'm gonna keep a small diary of my reverse engineering work in this thread. Basically, I'm finding obsolete, poorly documented, and/or poorly supported sensing devices, and getting them to produce legible open data for my Creative Coding and Experimental Capture students.

Today I liberated the GameTrak (c.2004), an unusual 3D sensor featuring two XY joysticks with retractable tethers. It’s ~$20 on eBay and very expressive: 6 channels of 12-bit data at 75Hz. It now emits data for #Processing and #p5.js over OSC, MIDI, WebSocket, and stdout. github.com/CreativeInqu...

I'm gonna keep a small diary of my reverse engineering work in this thread. Basically, I'm finding obsolete, poorly documented, and/or poorly supported sensing devices, and getting them to produce legible open data for my Creative Coding and Experimental Capture students.

This evening, building on the work of others, I helped liberate the TEMP_er1 USB temperature sensor. This is an inexpensive (~$25), unbranded, white-label HID device that does one thing well. Now its data stream can be accessed in Python, #Processing, and via OSC. github.com/CreativeInqu...

I'm gonna keep a small diary of my reverse engineering work in this thread. Basically, I'm finding obsolete, poorly documented, and/or poorly supported sensing devices, and getting them to produce legible open data for my Creative Coding and Experimental Capture students.

On Monday evening I liberated the MS6252B digital USB anemometer. This is a nice wind/humidity/temperature sensor, about $130 on Amazon (www.amazon.com/MS6252B-Hand...) with shit/nonexistent software. Now it talks to Python and #Processing: github.com/CreativeInqu...

I'm gonna keep a small diary of my reverse engineering work in this thread. Basically, I'm finding obsolete, poorly documented, and/or poorly supported sensing devices, and getting them to produce legible open data for my Creative Coding and Experimental Capture students.

Plottimation — my free online software for making GIF #animation from #risograph or #plotterArt frame-sheets — is now in version 1.16 after extensive improvements! golanlevin.github.io/plottimation/

This bubble-butt friend was scribed into an intaglio plate by a @bantamtools.bsky.social plotter; etched and printed; and then turned into a GIF using my Plottimation software, which handles all of the frame alignment. golanlevin.github.io/plottimation/

Plottimation — my free online software for making GIF #animation from #risograph or #plotterArt frame-sheets — is now in version 1.16 after extensive improvements! golanlevin.github.io/plottimation/