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.