The Leap Motion ($80) – a USB peripheral that can sense the position of your hands, in 3D, with extreme accuracy, is now shipping. The Airspace app store for the Leap Motion is also open for business.
The Leap Motion is described as ‘the world’s most accurate 3D Motion Control technology, capable of tracking up to 10 fingers, with accuracy up to 1/100th of a millimeter.
Reader Jon Stubbs shared his experience with the Leap Motion and using it with music apps:
Geko and AirMIDI are a couple of the apps that are available for controlling MIDI.
The out of the box experience was pretty carefully engineered, and includes some quick walk throughs to get a person used to how it works.
Obviously, the Leap device has a particular range, and can only see all of your fingers if they are not blocked by other fingers, so there are some ways you have to learn to work. But it does seem to intelligently and relatively quickly interpret your motions. The latency is not zero. On my 2012 RMBP, there is a noticeable lag between what happens on screen and what my hands are doing, but it’s minor.
As with the 2-D input devices (e.g., mice & trackpads), this will take some practice and “training” to build speed and accuracy. But I think once I get used to it, it will be a viable addition to the bulging toolbag that is modern tech.
The Leap Motion is priced at US $79.99 and is available via the Leap Motion site.
If you’re experimenting with the Leap Motion controller as a music tool, let us know how you’re using it and what you think of it!
via Jon Stubbs
The actual program is called Geco MIDI not Geko.
I’m trying the Leap Motion… My first impression : very funy and somewhat promising, but it will not replace surface control in music, and the “old” mouse in GUI.
It’s curious that the inventor of the mouse, Douglas Engelbart, died just 1 or 2 days before the Leap Motion arrives 🙂
That’s right:
https://www.synthtopia.com/content/2013/07/13/geco-midi-controller-for-the-leap-motion/
WankStep will be huge with this thing!
(no, but seriously someone will do that and call it music… but at this point, who could tell?)
Surely there will be some sort of theremin-like app developed that will allow this thing to shine.
That was the first thing I searched in the apps “theremin”. Not found. But it’s a matter of time.
I think too, that with some modifications, the theremin could be designed to have varying pitch resolution, including some kind of “soft quantization” of pitch.
I completely agree that this won’t replace other forms of control. It’s difficult because there is not the same physical cues in space that you have rubbing a pad or moving a mouse. Still, it will be good at some things.
Thanks a lot posting this. You can find everything you want to know about Geco on the product website. This includes extensive tutorials, full documentation, a forum and an issue tracker that shows insight on what we’re working on for next versions.
The app is indeed named Geco MIDI in the Airspace store since when doing user research before launch, it turned out that just ‘Geco’ has a lot of people somehow assume it was a science app. So the MIDI suffix was added to clarify the purpose. However, I will make them drop it in a few weeks when the next version comes out with OSC support. The version afterwards will have full CopperLan support also, so MIDI will really only be a sub-part of it 🙂
Just ordered. Anyone hear what the wait time is?
Mine arrived 3 days ago and have already purchased a few apps for it.
Mind you though I did order it over 6 months ago and paid 3 weeks ago..
So got in early.
Cant keep the kids off it. Serious potential.
Cheers
What apps are you using? The ones that come for free with AirSpace are not really that much fun – and lag as hell – also I have an i7 2,6 with 16 GB RAM.. But at least the hardware is working 😉
There shouldn’t be any lag at all when using the Leap. If there is, make sure you reserve a USB bus for it (it uses a lot of bandwidth) and that you’re using a good USB cable (like the one they provide)
Yea, I have the exact same config. Dedicated USB (not on hub), included USB cable– still there’s some lag. I wouldn’t say it’s bad, but it is noticeable. You can swipe your and and make a quick little circle and you can see the movements on screen are a little behind. Still pretty amazing, though.
Ok. Now in the menu bar there is a green horizontal bar icon. In that drop-down is a Settings.. option. Under the tracking option, you can choose “Balanced”, “High Speed”, or “Precision”. Under the Troubleshooting tab is a diagnostic visualizer. There the latency seems much lower. It’s likely that some of the apps have latency just from rendering the graphics (of course!). In that diagnostics visualizer, it is impressive to see how high resolution the reading is. I need to think more carefully about how this will be used.
any overseas shipments and how much added customs tax u had to pay? no european distribution?
Looks like a great tool!
Local prices on the website, just hit your country and see the shipping rate in your own currency.
Slightly worried that they open yet another market for “apps.”
An app disappears when the dev tires paying the dev taxes, then it’s impossible to move it when I switch my device. But that’s a general problem, not Leap-specific.
Also woulda liked backwards compatibility with Win XP (still 35% of desktop user base), what fantastic features of Win 7 are required?
I’m not sure what app market you’re referring to but, I have iOS apps that have been pulled a long time ago still on my devices. If you ever back up or sync your device you can always re-install an app. Whether it is available on the market or not. I believe the exact opposite of your post in the fact that the app stores are the best part of leap, and all devices that use them. In the old days we had to wait for the inventing company to roll out new features, now we have armies of thousands of devs just thinking of cool new ways to use the device you have already paid for, and for only a few bucks.
They are referring to the app market for Leap Motion.
Not sure what the concern is in this case though- the apps live on your computer right? You can back them up even easier than if they were on an idevice….
Could one use this to wiggle the knobs of a softsynth?
Can someone try this with Animoog?
I do have Animoog on my iPad4. And I have the Leap. But I don’t know how to configure it to communicate with Animoog. I’m guessing I’d need to open Geco MIDI, set it up to transmit via a network port. Then play Animoog with one hand whilst controlling X & Y on the Leap with the other hand. Probably be some latency. No advantage to touching the iPad in that scenario (other than it being cool, and… well, less fingerprints).
There’s no way it will work directly with the iPad.