Proximity — tdlidar_proximity

Wave your hand over the top of the phone for an instant, free, hardware blackout button — no extra gear.

Category: Touch & Input · Tier: Free · Needs: any iPhone (uses the built-in proximity sensor)

What it does

Streams the phone’s proximity sensor as a single 0/1: it reads 0 when nothing is near the top of the screen and 1 the moment something (your hand, a card, your face) comes close. It’s the same sensor that blanks the screen during a phone call, so it costs nothing and works on every iPhone. Because it’s a clean physical on/off, it makes a perfect panic/blackout trigger you can hit without looking — pass a hand over the phone and cut the visuals.

OSC in

| address | type | range | rate | |—|—|—|—| | /tdlidar/proximity | float | 0 far / 1 near | on change |

Outputs

out1 (CHOP) — one channel: tdlidar/proximity (0 or 1). 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)

  1. In the TDLiDAR app, enable Proximity (Touch & Input / Sensors).
  2. Drop the Proximity op. out1 sits at 0.
  3. Hold your hand flat over the top of the phone (where the earpiece is) — out1 jumps to 1, lift away and it drops to 0.
  4. Wire out1 into the index of a Switch TOP (input 0 = your show, input 1 = a black TOP). Hand over = instant blackout.

Advanced patterns

  • Blackout / panic cut: Switch TOP or Cross TOP driven by tdlidar/proximity — 0 shows the program, 1 cuts to black. Put a short Lag CHOP (fall ~0.2 s) on it for a soft fade out/in instead of a hard cut.
  • Momentary vs latched: for a toggle (cover once to black out, cover again to restore) run it through a Trigger CHOP → Count CHOP with Limit Max 1, wrap so each cover flips the state and you don’t have to keep your hand there.
  • Cue advance: combine with Count CHOP to step a Switch through scenes — each hand-pass moves to the next look (a free “next” button).
  • Logic combine: Logic CHOP to AND/OR proximity with another sensor — e.g. only allow the blackout while a Remote button is also held, to avoid accidental cuts.

Gotchas

  • Triggering proximity blanks the phone’s own screen (it’s the call-sensor). That’s expected — the OSC keeps flowing, but you won’t see the app’s preview while your hand is over it. Don’t panic when the display goes dark.
  • It’s a coarse near/far sensor with a short range (a few cm) and no distance — it’s 0 or 1, never in between. For a graded “how close”, use Front Distance or Back Distance instead.
  • Updates fire on change, so the channel can sit unchanged for a long time; that’s normal, not a dropped connection.