TDLiDAR

Turn an iPhone into ~40 live sensors inside TouchDesigner — with one drag-and-drop.

TDLiDAR is an iOS app plus a TouchDesigner operator family. The app streams everything a modern iPhone can sense — motion, LiDAR depth, body/hand/face tracking, audio, camera vision, touch, and more — over your local network. The operators plug straight into your patch.

No networking knowledge required. No Python. Drop an op, point the phone, make visuals move.

How it works

flowchart LR
  subgraph PHONE["📱 iPhone — TDLiDAR app"]
    direction TB
    S["Sensors&nbsp;→&nbsp;OSC"]
    V["Depth / RGB&nbsp;→&nbsp;NDI"]
    P["Point cloud&nbsp;→&nbsp;TCP"]
  end
  subgraph DESK["🖥️ Computer — TouchDesigner"]
    direction TB
    O["tdlidar_* operators → visuals"]
    N["NDI In → TOP"]
    C["Point Cloud → POP"]
  end
  S -- "UDP :9000" --> O
  V -- "NDI" --> N
  P -- "TCP" --> C

Most sensors travel as OSC (small numeric messages) on UDP port 9000.
Video (depth visuals, camera) travels as NDI.
The point cloud travels as TCP (lossless 50k XYZ+RGB).

The phone and the computer just need to be on the same network.

New here? Start with Install, then skim the App Guide. Stuck on “no data”? Jump to the FAQ.

Install (5 minutes)

Get the app — install TDLiDAR from the App Store on an iPhone (LiDAR Pro models unlock the depth/scan sensors; everything else works on any recent iPhone).
Get the family — drag TDLiDAR_family.tox into any TouchDesigner project. The operators appear in the TAB / OP Create menu under the TDLiDAR family (blue). See Install.
Connect — on the phone, open TDLiDAR, set the OSC target to your computer’s IP, start streaming. (The app shows your IP + port.)
Drop an op — TAB → TDLiDAR → e.g. Attitude. It listens on 9000 and its tile shows live data.

That’s it. If the tile shows moving numbers, you’re connected.

Your first patch

The fastest “wow”:

TAB → TDLiDAR → QuaternionEuler (phone tilt as pitch/roll/yaw).
Add a Geometry COMP + a Box SOP.
On the Geo’s Xform page, drag the op’s pitch/roll/yaw channels onto Rotate x/y/z (right‑click → Export CHOP). Multiply radians→degrees with a Math CHOP (×57.2957).
Tilt the phone → the box rotates in real space.

Swap it for Pinch (air‑fader), Audio (beat‑reactive), or Body (a puppet skeleton) and the same five steps drive anything.

The operators

Every operator has its own page in the Operators section. They share one rule: drop it, it listens on OSC Port 9000, and the tile previews its live output.

Motion — Acceleration · Gravity · Gyro · QuaternionEuler · Magnetometer · Barometer · Activity

Device — Battery · Thermal State · Low Power · Screen Brightness

Body & Vision — Body · Hand · Pinch · Gesture · Face · AR Body · Device Pose

Scene & Detect — Camera Exposure · Ambient Light · AR Planes · AR Mesh · QR / Barcode · Rectangle Detect · Text (OCR) · Saliency · Front Distance · Back Distance · Animal · Scene Room

Audio — Mic Level · Audio · Speech · Sound ID

Touch & Input — Touch · Apple Pencil · Proximity · NFC · Volume / Remote

External — AirPods · Apple Watch

Output / Utility — NDI · Point Cloud · Scene Build · Depth · Rectangle

App‑side setup

Port: the app sends OSC to UDP 9000 by default. If you change it on the phone, change OSC Port on each op to match.
One sensor or many: enable as many sensors as you want; they all multiplex onto the same port. Some camera sensors are mutually exclusive (you can’t run two different camera engines at once).
Device support: depth/scan/LiDAR ops need a Pro iPhone; Face needs TrueDepth; Apple Pencil needs an iPad; Apple Watch needs the companion Watch app. Each op page lists what it needs.

The full walkthrough — every mode and every setting — is in the App Guide, including deep references for every LiDAR setting and every Point Cloud control.

Troubleshooting — “no data”

The #1 issue with anything OSC. Walk this list:

Same network? Phone and computer on the same Wi‑Fi/LAN. Guest networks and “client isolation” block it.
Right IP? The app must target this computer’s IP. The app shows it.
Port match? App port == op’s OSC Port (default 9000).
Sensor enabled + streaming? The app must be actively streaming that sensor.
Firewall? macOS/Windows firewall can block inbound UDP — allow TouchDesigner.
String sensors (Speech, OCR, QR payload, NFC, Sound ID label) need an OSC In DAT, not a CHOP — if you see numbers but no text, that’s why.
Stale channels? Body/Hand only update while a subject is in frame (/detected). Check the op’s Gotchas.

More answers in the FAQ.

For advanced users

Wire format is open — see the OSC Reference and the plain-language OSC Sensor Guide. Every op is just an OSC In CHOP/DAT + a Select; nothing is locked. Build your own receivers against the same addresses (Max, PD, Blender, Unity, openFrameworks, a browser).
Smoothing: Lag/Filter CHOP on noisy motion; the 1€ filter pattern for pose.
Triggers: Trigger/Logic CHOP on momentary channels (Remote, NFC, Gesture, beat/onset).
Geometry: Body/Hand/Animal output POPs you can instance geometry onto; 6DoF Pose drives a Camera COMP for projection mapping.
Coexistence: consult the app’s conflict rules — AR‑world sensors (Pose/Planes/Mesh/Ambient/Back Distance) share one session; Body pairs only with Hands; ARKit Body and the depth session don’t mix.

Reference docs

App Guide — every mode and setting, top to bottom.
LiDAR — Every Setting — the depth/tone/colour/NDI controls and how each changes the look.
Point Cloud — Effects & Settings — viewer, cleanup, streaming and PLY capture.
Operators — one page per operator.
OSC Reference — the complete OSC wire spec (every address, type, range, rate).
OSC Sensor Guide — plain-language tour of the wire format.
FAQ — quick answers, especially for “no data”.

Made by Aristides Lab · App Store · GitHub