iCube – First Tests

So, today I took the iCube out of the box and tried to get it working. I have previously had it working very effectively using the Editor software, and this worked well today also, with all four sensors that are supplied as part of the starter kit working perfectly in that environment.

The next step was to try and get input into Max/MSP. This proved to be much less straighforward. There is an iCube object supplied with the hardware, but after following the installation instructions, Max was reporting an error loading and reporting a ‘bogus’ object. This means that the object didn’t load during Max’s startup. The object itself is supplied without a file extension, and as such, OSX was reporting that it was a Unix Executable rather than a Max Object. After some protracted googling, I figured out that the extension for Max objects used to be .mxd, and after adding this, the icon changed and all seemed to be well.

However, on booting Max the next time, it reported “error: iCube.mxd not available for PowerPC”. I have yet to find a solution to this, as removing the extension just stops it loading again, as before. I sent an email to the iCube tech support too.

The good news is that receiving input from the iCube into Max is actually a lot more straightforward than the manual makes you believe. You don’t actually need the iCube object at all to take input from it: you just need to configure it in the Editor and then use the ctlin or notein objects in Max to receive the input just like any other MIDI data. I’m struggling a little with my MIDI setup, but it seems to work providing the notein is listening to the right device (in my case a Quattro USB Audio interface). You do need to configure the sensor in Editor to send the right sort of MIDI data for the receiving object (ie, there’s no point sending velocity to a notein etc).