A data-centric framework for media-rich applications.
TouchNDN is a collection of C++ and Python plugins and libraries for TouchDesigner visual programming environment that utilizes NDN to enable data-centric communication in a distributed network of machines. The project originated at UCLA REMAP, an interactive storytelling research laboratory.
Data-centric approach to networking stems from ICN, where the main idea is to move away from end host addressing to data addressing. In these networks, a data packet is a secure and autonomous “grain’” that is storage- and host-agnostic and can be fetched by multiple clients simultaneously (inherent multicast). This approach, applied for interactive multimedia applications, allows for better scalability of existing and emergent use cases in such fields as augmented reality, low-latency media dissemination, non-linear video streaming, multi-user VR streaming, etc. For more information on new experiments for data-centric multimedia, please refer to this paper.
This repository contains source code for TouchNDN components, organized as Xcode project.
Currently, TouchNDN is supported only for macOS systems, since NFD can only be built for Linux-based systems. The following is a list of software and libraries one may need to run TouchNDN:
- NFD
- NDN-CPP
- CNL-CPP
- python 3.5.1 (or same version as installed TouchDesigner uses, last time checked - 3.5.1)
- PyNDN2 (optional, for Python support)
- PyCNL (optional, for Python support)
- NDN-RTC (optional, work in progress)
- TouchNDN helper code:
brew tap remap/touchndn && brew install touchndn
For easier setup, use [setup.sh] (TouchNDN/setup.sh at master · remap/TouchNDN · GitHub) script provided with the repository. Or just run this command in the terminal:
cd $HOME && curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/remap/touchndn/master/setup.sh | bash
Once checked out, one need to build plugins using Xcode project.
- Open touchNDN.xcworkspace file from cpp folder using Xcode
- Go to touchNDN project build settings and set up prerequisites paths:
LIBCNLCPP_INSTALL_DIR— for CNL-CPP library install path;LIBNDNCPP_INSTALL_DIR— for NDN-CPP library install path;LIBNDNRTC_INSTALL_DIR— for NDN-RTC library install path (optional).
- Select namespaceDAT target and build the project
This will build TouchDesigner plugins into touchndn-plugins folder next to the project file.
These plugins can be loaded into TouchDesigner.
To run TouchNDN, one must first launch NFD:
nfd-start &> /tmp/nfd.log
To load TouchNDN plugin, from the operator dialog in TouchDesigner select C++ DAT/TOP (depending on the component you want to load) and select plugin from touchndn-plugins folder.
There is a example.toe project distributed with the repo which can be examined for more practical use cases of TouchNDN.
ndnrtcOut TOP
ndnrtcIn TOP