Gyro — tdlidar_gyro
Spin or twist the phone and drive things by how fast it’s turning, not where it points.
Category: Motion · Tier: Free · Needs: any iPhone (no LiDAR required)
What it does
Streams the phone’s rotational velocity — how quickly it’s turning around each of its three axes, in radians per second. Hold the phone still and all three read ~0; flick your wrist and the matching axis spikes, then settles back to 0 the instant you stop. It measures rate of turn, so it’s perfect for detecting flicks, twists and spins rather than absolute orientation.
OSC in
| address | type | range | rate |
|---|---|---|---|
/tdlidar/motion/rotation/x |
float | rad/s (rotationRate) | ≤50 Hz |
/tdlidar/motion/rotation/y |
float | rad/s (rotationRate) | ≤50 Hz |
/tdlidar/motion/rotation/z |
float | rad/s (rotationRate) | ≤50 Hz |
Outputs
out1 (CHOP) — three channels rotx, roty, rotz (rad/s). The node tile previews out1.
Parameters
| par | default | what it does |
|---|---|---|
| OSC Port | 9000 | UDP port to listen on (match the app) |
Quick start (beginner)
- Enable Gyro in the app’s Motion sensors.
- Drop the Gyro op — three flat lines near 0.
- Twist the phone around different axes and watch each channel spike.
- Wire one channel into a Speed CHOP’s input, or straight into the rotate speed of a spinning Geo, so the visual spins as fast as the phone does.
Advanced patterns
- Velocity → angle: Feed a channel into a Speed CHOP to integrate rad/s into an accumulating angle — turn the phone and the visual keeps the rotation you “wound” into it.
- Flick gesture: Math CHOP Length of the three axes → Trigger CHOP (threshold ~3 rad/s, short re-trigger delay) to fire one bang per sharp flick. Add a Logic CHOP per axis to distinguish a roll-flick from a yaw-flick.
- Spin energy: A Filter CHOP on the magnitude gives a smooth “how much is it spinning” envelope for driving glow, blur or feedback amount.
- Deadband: Hands are never perfectly still — a Logic CHOP in > mode (or a Limit CHOP) gates out tiny <0.1 rad/s noise before it reaches a trigger.
Gotchas
- This is velocity, not position — it returns to 0 when the phone stops moving, even if the phone is now facing a new way. For “which way is it pointing”, use QuaternionEuler.
- Spikes are momentary; downstream logic that expects a held value needs a Speed/Filter/Trigger in between.
- rotationRate is zeroed by the app’s Calibrate snapshot, so a press of Calibrate re-references the resting baseline.