The Bela add-on board for BeagleBone boards has been used to make some very nice sound projects. kobakant.at artist mikst has developed a nice e-Textile project with Bela called Blanket.

This is an example project/ experiment to use Bela board with e-Textile sensors. Here, I am making crochet blanket with exposed conductive pieces so one can use their skin resistance to “play” music by touching different part of the blanket. The blanket was originally made for a small workshop, and it was connected to Teensy LC via breadboard and sending data to MaxMSP on a computer via USB serial. This time, I am extending this project to connect with Bela, which runs PD on board. The experiment is to find out good ways to connect textile sensors with Bela board.

BELA blanket from mikst on Vimeo.

The code on this example is PD patch, which is based on the example from Esteban’s residency workshop patch. It is simplified to just to trigger sound files with thresholds. The sound files also come from Esteban’s patch.

more photos from the process >>