I have been having a first play with a SPOKE capacitive touch controller board. At the time of writing, it is available from Pimoroni at:
https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/spoke-capacitive-touch-controller-board?variant=56217676382587
This is not a full review, more a first-impressions note after getting it connected and trying a few of the web-based examples. The short version is: it worked, it was fun, and there was one small setup detail that was worth noting if you are using a mac neo.
The SPOKE board is a capacitive touch controller. In practice, that means you can touch parts of the board and use those touches as inputs. One of the interesting things about it is that it can act as a MIDI controller, so immediately my mind went to sound, music, GarageBand, and possibly coding experiments later on.
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| image taken from https://www.spokeboard.com/ |
The place to start is the SPOKE website:
On the site, there is a very useful route labelled “Have your SPOKE board? Start here!” That proved to be a great way in. I followed the instructions from there rather than trying to guess the setup. This is always a good test for boards like this: can you get from opening the package to something actually happening without spending half the session hunting for obscure drivers, firmware, or old forum posts?
In this case, the answer was yes. On the Mac Neo I was using, I needed a USB-C to USB-C cable. That is not a criticism of the board, but it is the sort of small practical point that can waste time if you have the wrong lead nearby.
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| interactive play apps |
Once connected, the board was recognised and I was able to try the web-based apps linked from the SPOKE pages. This was the most enjoyable part of the first session. Some of the examples made sounds directly (see above). Others visualised the sounds, which made the board feel much more like an interactive physical computing object than just a small music controller. A few examples also allowed different sounds to be attached to different capacitive pads, which is where the potential of the board became clearer.
This is the bit I liked most: it sits nicely between physical computing, music technology, and interaction design. Touch a pad, get a response. Change the mapping, and get a different response. It is immediate enough for beginners, but possibly open-ended enough to suggest more substantial experiments.
As a quick route into touch-based interaction and MIDI, it has made a good start.
As we are still talking about using a Mac, I have tried Spoke with GarageBand, and yes, it is fun. The two screens below show the settings and how to get it to act as drums.
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| GarageBand settings |
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| Taiko drum setting |
The next thing I want to try is:
Looking more closely at the coding side and whether it can be adapted for other physical computing experiments.
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