todbot blog

Andrew Choi has an OS X Programming blog which contains a lot of useful and interesting observations and test code as he builds a auto-accompaniment application.

Potentially useful to my KCS remake idea (assuming I can use MusicPlayer and not have to write my own scheduler) are his experiments with the MusicSequence and MusicPlayer APIs that are part of Core Audio (and not, confusingly, really considered part of Core MIDI). Particularly useful is his MusicSequenceTest code that shows how to use it in a lot clearer way than the official example given in /Developer/Examples/CoreAudio/Services/PlaySequence.

Aside: just found this page on with data flow diagrams on MIDI Operations in Core Audio that seems kinda useful.

Question: since there is a one-to-one relationship between MusicSequence and MusicPlayer, and the MusicPlayer is what has the transport controls (stop,start,etc), can I instantiate many MusicPlayers (say 128 of them) and start/stop them all at various with impunity, with multiple MusicPlayers running concurrently? If so, the hard part of KCS is done.

musicprog | 2 Comments »

I’ve essentially given up getting something like the DPAC Wireless module (even though Circuit Cellar has had at least two nice articles about it). However, I recently found a consumer access point that is cheaper and almost as small.

The Asus WL330 Pocket Access Point was recently
reviewed by Tom’s Hardware (I didn’t know Asus even made networking gear).

It has some interesting features:

• Acts as AP, bridge or ethernet adapter
• tiny: 86mm * 62mm * 17mm (3.4″x2.4″x0.7″)
• low-ish power: 4VDC @ 1A
• pretty darn cheap: ~$69 (and getting cheaper it looks like)

From the pictures that Tom’s Hardware took of the internals, it looks like a few more millimeters could be shaved from it’s width (maybe down to 50mm) and a bit from its length (maybe down to 80mm) by removing the outer plastic shell.

And it turns out Asus makes an 802.11g version of this gizmo, called the Asus WL330g Pocket Access Point.

hardware-hacking | No Comments »