
Show HN: Theremin I/O - rwinn
http://theremin.io
======
toddmorey
That site, while beautiful, really frustrated me. I kept clicking to get
something to happen, but couldn't. I tried to scroll and each time it would
put me back at the top of the page. Let's say that I'm intrigued by the
product, but not enough to fight with the site, unfortunately. :(

~~~
rwinn
That sucks, what OS and browser are you using?

~~~
Kerrick
Same thing happened to me.

Safari Version 7.0 (9537.71), OS X 10.9 (13A603)

Screencast: [http://i.imgur.com/7uigOMg.gif](http://i.imgur.com/7uigOMg.gif)

Couldn't two-finger scroll, couldn't click the navigation circles, and when I
dragged the scrollbar manually it'd snap to the top when I let go.

~~~
rwinn
Seems window.scrollTo does not work properly in safari when you kick the
layers in to hardware accelerated mode.

I've disabled the snapscrolling now on all Safari versions. Try it now! I
think I'll end up disabling it everywhere since people seem not to like it
that much :)

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namuol
Oooh man, this is an awesome idea. I will be playing with this soon.

But just one suggestion: video footage of the app being used on the page,
front-and-center.

The live logo is really neat, but it doesn't really convey anything about the
_purpose_ of the app.

I'm already familiar with Theremins, but I'd bet a lot of your userbase
wouldn't immediately grasp the nature of the app from what's on the page if
they haven't seen one being used before.

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pit
If you don't have an iPhone, you can build your own Theremin (with vacuum
tubes) by following this Popular Electronics article from 1955:
[http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/PopularElectronics/Apr1955/PE_A...](http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/PopularElectronics/Apr1955/PE_Apr1955.htm)

Simple!

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jbergstroem
Just tried the app. Cool stuff! Managed to hook the midi out up with Traktor.
Here's a movie of the beatmasher in action:
[http://bergstroem.nu/theremin.m4v](http://bergstroem.nu/theremin.m4v)

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irollboozers
Are there any open source variants of this? Would love to play around with
different possibilities (saxophone or cello setting, piano on your laptop,
slappin da bass, etc).

~~~
rwinn
Nope, but we are discussing releasing the sensor code as a open source
library. It's pretty modular already, and wouldn't require a ton of work :)

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nbush
To be honest, I'm most impressed by the directional lighting simulation in the
header. Any hints on how it was done? Mouse position and image opacity?

~~~
rwinn
It's done using webgl and additive blending of 3 light sources rendered with
maxwell render. (check the console for a list of libraries used ;)

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donutdan4114
This site reminds me of the Mac Pro site: [http://www.apple.com/mac-
pro/](http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/)

I hate libraries that alter the scrolling action, don't mess with that please.
That's like switching keys on the keyboard, it is a very bad UX...

On a happier note, checking the console made me happy. I didn't event know you
could "style" log messages. Very cool.

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JonnieCache
Very nice. You might want to consider supporting OSC as well as midi. The
mobile platform is providing a way to break from that horrible proprietary
1970s protocol, and you can do your bit to help out!

I really should write that essay about how midi is an evil tyrant holding back
musical expression.

Also OSC will allow you to have less "discrete" notes, so it might actually
sound like a theremin.

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wahnfrieden
This was fun. Why don't you allow setting the key though?

Also, I would love to see a less skeuomorphic interface. Some things are
particularly bad, like when changing the scale (you have to tap a button to
the left of the active selection to bring up the choice selector).

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jayt92
I like the design of the site, however it hijacks the two-finger swipe to go
back for me. I haven't seen this happen on any other webpage before. Chrome on
OS X 10.9.

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nichol4s
Looks very interesting - but I had to switch to Chrome to view the site. The
scrolling (using mouse wheel / trackpad) doesn't work properly on Safari 6.1.

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ablanton
check out standaloneV2 as well
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/standalonev2/id656556702?mt=...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/standalonev2/id656556702?mt=8),
works similar but based on sound waves and is free for the month as a part of
the wrong biennial [http://thewrong.org/](http://thewrong.org/)

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frdmn
I also noticed that the screenshots in the iTunes Store are not in the best
quality. You can even see some artifacts on the tab bar at the bottom.

~~~
rwinn
I can see that now as well. The screens i uploaded was PNGs, Apple must have
replaced them with pretty low quality jpeg versions :/

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kcbanner
Confusing site, why not just make a normal website.

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mrrazz
Interesting app. Also, the website's source code seems to contain a secret
code. When you type it in, it unlocks teh funnies :-)

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JacksonGariety
Very cool! Apps like these make my phone a beautiful, versatile thing, not to-
do lists.

(Hijacked scrolling doesn't work in Safari, fyi)

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lnanek2
This is unfortunate. I have never heard a worse instrument, and I've been to
events where this was played by practiced people. Okay, maybe those annoying
horns some cultures play during soccer are worse, but these are still really
bad. I consider it more of something that was easy to make rather than
something that was made to produce a good result. They would have been better
off just coming up with their own thing.

~~~
lewaldman
Correct me if I'm wrong but it has midi functionality on the payed version.
This actually means that it could sound as anything as soon as you plug it on
your computer and apply some sampled sound.

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mharju
Bought it. Does not seem to work properly with iOS6.1 and iPhone 4s. Hopefully
there'll be an update on this!

~~~
rwinn
If you send me an email at johan@theremin.io we can try to sort it out.

~~~
mharju
It works now! Had to boot my phone for some reason. Looking good :)

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minikrob
Just write "disco" anywhere in the page. The creator left a surprise. Cool
webGL work.

~~~
jcutrell
I was going through the code and found that as well! Nice effect.

Seems like the main.js[1] file is inordinately large to me - did you feel that
way?

[1]
[http://theremin.io/scripts/main.js?v=5](http://theremin.io/scripts/main.js?v=5)

~~~
minikrob
I did feel the same.

It's quite large and poorly fragmented in my honest opinion. But the code sure
does the job !

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tehlark
Very neat, now I'll spend the rest of the day attempting to master Good
Vibrations.

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zamnedix
This site is literally just a black page for me on Chromium/Crunchbang.

