(News via Piksel)The Annual Piksel conference is just around the corner for those that are not yet aware. This conference gathers leading developers and artists that work within Open Source Software which takes place in Bergen(Norway) between November 19-22, 2009. If you can make to this festival in person, then please,- do yourself a favour!!!
With festival schedule being announced, there is a plenty to see and discover (See Full Schedule). I will be doing my best to highlight some of the stand out projects that are likely to make a stand for years to come in the Open Source Visualism field. First up, – Milkymist.
The Milkymist™
The Milkymist™ project develops a stand-alone device in a small form factor that is capable of rendering MilkDrop-esque visuals effects in real time, with a high level of interaction with many sensors and using live audio or video streams as a base. Open source components and design tools have been developed or used as much as possible. A system-on-chip implemented in a FPGA has been chosen for meeting this goal at the IP core level.
The flexibility of the FPGA enables advanced users to modify the design, and also permits compact integration of many interfaces (MIDI, OSC, DMX512, analog sensors, video inputs), making Milkymist™ a platform of choice for the mobile VJ. The design is also highly modular and documented, making the code easy to re-use in other open source system-on-chips.
Milkymist™ is more than a visual synthesizer – it is also one of the leading open source system-on-chip designs. It is today the fastest open source system-on-chip capable of running Linux, and it comes with an extensive set of features and graphics accelerators.
The IP cores that make up the system-on-chip are entirely written in open source synthesizable Verilog HDL and come with test benches and documentation, which makes Milkymist™ a great library of re-usable logic cores to serve as a base for other open source hardware.
Technical Paper (Piksel09):
http://www.milkymist.org/doc/paper_overview.pdf
Piksel09 Presentation: 20th November 2009:
Milkymist, an open hardware VJ platform
Building: Bergen Kunstmuseum/Stenersen
Room: Auditoriet
Additional Resources:
Technical overview paper. A good introduction.
The blog is regularly updated with the latest project news.
The wiki contains, among other things, a “getting started” guide for the ML401, the roadmap, and the FAQ.
The “devel” mailing list for general discussions about development. See also public archives of the list.