cabash

elementary cellular automata sequencer.

a toy for exploring parameters of 1-dimensional binary CA, with an eye towards applications in musical sequencing.

see [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ElementaryCellularAutomaton.html] for more background.

build

just make and run.

requirements:

• posix (supporting CLOCK_MONOTONIC)
• ncurses
• liblo
• liblua5.1

macos: doesn't build yet, sorry. need to work around the lack of posix clock functions. see this SO thread: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21665641/ns-precision-monotonic-clock-in-c-on-linux-and-os-x

(i'd be interested to know if there is some dynamic library that provides a workaround, instead of adding mach functions to the C program.)

usage

ca [config file]

run the ca executable with and see a scrolling sequence of elementary cellular automata states.

on each update, ca sends an OSC message to the address and port specified by configuration (port 57120 on localhost by default.) message payload is a single binary blob of all cell values (one byte per cell.)

key commands:

• 1-8: toggle bits in the update rule
• [, ], : move the lower boundary up and down
• {, }, : move the upper boundary up and down
• o : toggle left boundary mode (wrapping, fixed low, fixed high)
• p : toggle right boundary mode (wrapping, fixed low, fixed high)
• -, = : change update speed
• _, + : change update speed more quickly
• space : toggle pause
• q, w, e, r, t, y, u, i - set the middle 8 cells on (*)
• a, s, d, f, g, h, j, k - set the middle 8 cells off (*)
• z, x, c, v, b, n, m, ,, . - set state to various patterns (z=clear, x=single)
• / - randomize state (uniform, std::rand)
• CTRL-X : quit immediately

(*) NB: setting a cell value causes an extra row to be drawn. (ncurses is a pain sometimes.)

configuration

some settings can be stored and loaded in configuration files (actually lua scripts.) see conf.lua for a basic example of all recognized fields. the global conf table is mandatory. any other lua code will also be executed.

to use a configuration file, enter its name as the first argument to ca.

TODO:

• add libmonome bindings to use with grids