Welcome

This is an evolving resource for connecting microcontrollers – specifically Arduino – to the TouchDesigner platform in various ways. Most of these examples have been tested using an Arduino Nano 33 IoT however many of the examples will work with other Arduino Boards as well as other microcontrollers.

This resource also assumes some introductory familiarity with general programming concepts, physical computing, and TouchDesigner. You should be somewhat comfortable (or willing to try):

  • Writing code using:
    • Arduino
    • Python
  • Following Circuit Diagrams
  • TouchDesigner Basics:
    • General Navigation
    • Adding, connecting, removing, activating, and deactivating operators
    • Changing Parameters and Exporting CHOP values

The following tutorials and resources show a few different ways to communicate between your microcontroller and the TouchDesigner platform.

Topics currently covered are:

  • Serial communication
  • MIDI Communication
  • UDP over Wifi Communication
  • OSC over Wifi Communicaiton
  • Websockets Using Socket.io

Resources and References

Most of these examples draw from pre exsiting resources and stand on the work of many open source resources, pre existing examples, libraries, curricula, as well as numerous colleages and friends. Special thank you to the Physical Computing team at ITP/IMA NYU, Tom Igoe, and the Immersive Interactive HQ team and contributors, all for making resources accessible and available to anyone with an internet connection. Please see the Resources and References page for a more complete list of resources and refereneces.