Sending and Receiving data through Arduino

When connected with Arduino, Touchdesigner becomes a powerful tool that makes use of external sensors to enhance immersive and interactive experiences. This brief tutorial will walk you through using Firmata, a protocol found both in Arduino IDE and Touchdesigner to enable communication between the softwares through serial. 

In Arduino

Connect your board to your computer and launch Arduino. Make sure your hardware matches the software by selecting the correct board and port from "Tools". For this tutorial we will connect a potentiometer, as input in our circuit, and a servo motor, as our output, to the Arduino board - It is important to note that, while we will connect these components to influence each other to examine how to both send and receive data through Arduino, this is not standard practice as Touchdesigner will also remind us. 

 

To load the code choose "File" > Examples, then select Firmata > StandardFirmata. Click on the arrow button  to upload the code.

In Touchdesigner

 Open Palette

Select firmata, drag and drop it anywhere in the interface. Click "p" on your keyboard to view the parameters window. From the sub-category