What is the Manta?
A USB touch controller for audio and video. Uses HID spec. Does capacitive sensing. 6-8ms latency (w some jitter). Portable and somewhat tough. Bus powered. It’s slightly like a monome….
Design features
It has a fixed layout because it’s a hardware device. It is discrete. 48 hexagonal pads which outputs how much surface area is covered. Slightly less than 8 bit. The sliders at the top have 12 bit resolution and are single touch.
the hexagon grid is inspired by just intonation lattices. Based on Erv Wilson and RH Bosanquet’s papers graphs
If every sensor is a note, you have 6 neighbours
It has LED feedback under the sensors (you can turn this off) inspired by monome.
The touch sensing is inspired by the Buchla 100-series controller.
Has velocity detection. Does this based on two consecutive samples.
Uses
Microtonal keyboard, live processing, etc
Future
Something called the manta mate will allow this to be used to control analog synthesisers
