MagicShifter 3000: Now available (MIDIShifter variant, on the horizon) ..

[Jay Vaughan (ibisum)]

> The video looks impressive.  Can you tell us some more about the music apps that are in development?  I would love to help out as a tester but just want to know if it is something that will fit into my work flow..
> 

The MagicShifter3000 is in production - we got our factory boards last week and have been avidly testing and validating them all .. good times. ;)

The MagicShifter in a nutshell: a pocket-friendly, portable light synthesizer, with built-in sensors (accelerometers for each axis, magnetometer, etc.) and a powerful processor for producing lighting effects.  It can also do MIDI with the right cable attached.  It is also Wifi-enabled, can host (AP) a wifi network or join an existing one, and function just like a little web server - you can serve web pages from it directly.

The MagicShfiter3000 firmware itself is still in progress - we’re rapidly moving through the features for the ‘out of the box’ user experience - POV text display, full Wifi, onboard PixelEditor (you can make your own POV images, amaze-balls, using the editor), Text editor, etc.  This is all working as of today - though we are probably going to work another week on the basics of the Firmware and user package for the basic MS3000, because there are all sorts of cool things in the works… and we want to start selling MagicShifter3000’s to the general public soon, because it is an awesome, awesome toy.  :)

(You can learn all about the MagicShifter here:  http://magicshifter.net/)

The MIDIShifter is a MagicShifter3000 with full MIDI hardware to connect to your synth.  The idea is that you plug it into any synth you want to make music with, and you’ve got an additional ‘expander’ for the synth.  The current list of modules that work on the non-factory prototype, and need to be soon released to the beta team for testing include an Arpeggiator with multiple patterns, and a 16-channel MIDI sequencer that will blow your mind.

It is my personal design, based on years of discussions on the -bar and elsewhere about how a live, interactive sequencer should work. :)

Anyway, the MIDIShifter will ship with onboard web-based editors, so you can for example edit your arpeggiator/sequencer patterns by connecting to the MS3000 via wifi, and opening its web browser interface.  So any MIDI synth in your room can now have an arpeggiator/sequencer module, editable with your iPad/whatever.

Plus there are more modules planned.  We can do MIDI-over-Wifi, so you can use the MIDIShifter as a MIDI expander system without needing to run cables everywhere. We’ll do a MIDI delay module and a few other things - upload a .mid file of your favorite piece, for example, and the MIDIShifter will help you learn to play it.  And we may also expand the arp/sequencer to use Wifi over that point, meaning one MIDIShifter can act as the master ‘conductor’ for all other MIDIShifters in the house.

Another mode I want to make: if you have multiple MIDIShifters, you can use them each as general purpose MIDI controllers - for example, I had 6 MIDIShifters on the table at Munich, side by side, and it is a great configuration for mixing tracks .. would be a versatile way of handling my digital mixing needs, in a neat package.  Looks like this:

https://primitur.at/magicShifterRow.jpg
https://primitur.at/magicShifterRowMovie.mov

(There’s some software to write to make it work, but you will get the point I hope..)

The current status is that we just got the factory hardware, and the firmware will have rolling releases for the next few weeks until we get it stabilized, and then we’ll sell to ‘normal users’. During this time, I want to start up the beta testing of the MIDI side of things, and thats why I’d like for the music-bar members to have a chance at participating. At the moment we want beta testers who are able to put up with the hassle of flashing the firmware every week and doing testing for us with a variety of different hardware ..


> Hope all went well in Munich..

Munich was awesome!  We met a bunch of great people and got our first batch of beta testers for the MagicShifter3000 project .. I also made contact with a well-known synth-maker, whose name I won’t tell you yet (they’re French, though), who is very, very interested in integrated MIDIShifter with .. shall we say .. some live (French) act or two, who might be sort of well-known already for their use of light madness in their shows .. ;)

;
--
Jay Vaughan
ibisum at gmail.com




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