I’ve been working closely with Jeff Snyder of Snyderphonics for several years on various projects. One of the most exciting has been his Manta controller, which is an extremely sensitive and expressive controller that connects via USB. It can be used to control synthesis, video playback, audio processing, or whatever else you want to expressively control in real time. I’ve built a software library to communicate with the Manta, and also a PD and Max external that exposes the Manta to your favorite dataflow language.
MantaFlext
MantaFlext is an external for Pure Data and Max/MSP that allows your patches to take input from the Snyderphonics Manta, and also to control the LEDs on the Manta. It is built on top of my libmanta library (see below). The main documentation is via the help patches that accompany the binary downloads. As with libmanta, the MantaFlext library is open source, and is available as part of the same repository as libmanta.
Downloads
The official binary downloads are hosted on the Snyderphonics site. Head on over there to get the latest builds.
libmanta
libmanta is a cross-platform API for the Snyderphonics Manta control surface. The low-level USB communication uses hidapi to communicate with the Manta, and provides a way to subscribe to the different events the Manta can generate, as well as methods to set the LEDs.
For the less technical, libmanta isn’t an application, it’s a library or platform that others can use to build applications on top of. It makes it easier to build an application that talks to the Manta.