iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

The micropython code is here: github.com/davisonaudio... for anyone wanting to try it out and it is forked from the excellent original project (that does a similar train departure board with a different LCD display) which is here: github.com/oliciv/pico-...

github.com

GitHub - davisonaudio/national-rail-countdown: Countdown clock displaying how many minutes until the next train(s) at a national rail station

Countdown clock displaying how many minutes until the next train(s) at a national rail station - davisonaudio/national-rail-countdown

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Weekend project: using a @pimoroni.com Galactic Unicorn LED display to show the time (in mins) until the next 3 trains going into London from my local station. Purple background= on time, yellow= delayed, red= less than 10 mins away (time for a jog!). Using the national rail API for realtime updates

A Pimoroni Galactic Unicorn 53x11 LED matrix displaying the numbers 1 (on a red background), 11 (purple background), and 26 (purple background) on the left with the current time (17:07) displayed on the right with a blue background.

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Andrew McPherson @apmcpherson.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Coming up August 3rd: a double-header online seminar from the Augmented Instruments Lab featuring Oliver Bown and Anthony Marasco. Starts 3pm UK time here: youtube.com/live/WuHdzO6...

youtube.com

AIL Open Seminars #013 and #014 – Ollie Bown and Anthony Marasco

YouTube video by Augmented Instruments Lab

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Congrats to the 9 other project winners which also included my colleague Adam Schmidt (both supervised by @apmcpherson.bsky.social ) and especially winner of the grand prize David Gabriel! So many great hardware projects on display and lots of inspiring talks!

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Last week I was at the University of Lancaster for the wonderful @prosquared.org summer school. A great and informative week. I was also lucky enough to be selected as a prize winner for my HaptiCoupler project!

The selected prize winners from the Pro2 network hardware prototyping summer school stood in a line with Prof. Steve Hodges in the centre

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

This week I'm in Lancaster for the wonderful @prosquared.org summer school! Here's a photo of today's demo session and I'll be doing a presentation about my work tomorrow. Great to be here and learn more about the journey of going from prototype to production!

Matt shows the HaptiCoupler system, explaining it to one person while another person tries it out

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Hopefully this writeup is a useful reference for anyone looking at options for hybrid conferences or streaming concerts. Not everything went perfectly, but in general the setups worked fairly well!

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

I have written a little about the livestreaming setups that Jordie Shier and I used to stream #NIME2026 last week (dual paper tracks 9am-5pm + 2 alternating concert venues 7pm-11pm = lots of streaming). davisonaudio.github.io/posts/2026/0...

A diagram of the livestreaming setup for the papers track, centred around a vision mixer.

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Yesterday our lab ( @apmcpherson.bsky.social & co.) hosted the NIME open day - a post #NIME2026 event for anyone interested to come and demo their instruments and music tech creations and for attendees to come and experience them. Around 40 demos and ~200 attendees came along - some photos below!

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

I'm very glad to hear that the livestreams were appreciated!

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Though I've mostly been running around sorting livestreams for the online attendees at #NIME2026, I did also present our paper on Wednesday! It's also now available in the NIME proceedings here: nime.org/proc/nime202...

Matt stood holding a microphone and presenting his talk. The projector shows a Conclusions slide with the bullet points:
- This is hard
- Consider specific use cases
- Consider sensor + actuator limitations
- This is interesting

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

By examining this, we hope it provides practical techniques and inspiration to designers looking to build hybrid (part-physical and part-digital) instruments! If you're at NIME (in-person or online) catch the talk in paper session 1B! Read the paper here: davisonaudio.github.io/files/daviso...

davisonaudio.github.io

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Sensing and actuating simultaneously in the same domain is hard to achieve without lots of crosstalk, but really useful for purposes like haptic feedback, self-sustaining instruments, and active acoustic control. We look at examples of how this is achieved across domains (NIME, HCI, Acoustics, etc.

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Alongside our lab co-hosting #NIME2026, I'll also be presenting a paper there! Our paper "Techniques for Closely-Coupled Sensing and Actuation in Digital Musical Instruments" (by me, Adam Schmidt, and @apmcpherson.bsky.social) explores methods of sensing and actuating for hybrid instruments (1/2)

A diagram displaying 4 different methods of achieving closely coupled sensing and actuation. From top to bottom: Time (where the system alternates between sensing and actuating), Frequency (where sensing and actuating occur in different frequency ranges), Impedance (where impedance variables, such as voltage and current or force and velocity, are used to separate sensing and actuating) and Modality (where sensing and actuating occur in different, but perceptually similar, domains).

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Coming to #NIME2026 or in London at the end of June anyway? Come along to our lab open day on 27/06! We'll be demoing our work (including @apmcpherson.bsky.social's magnetic resonator piano) and you can submit a proposal for a demo of your own work! Sign up here: forms.cloud.microsoft/e/rTgMiXpXd6

Promo poster for the Augmented Instruments Lab's NIME open day from 12pm to 5pm at Imperial College London on the 27th of June 2026

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

This #CHI2026 paper is now available on the ACM digital library! Find it here: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

A screenshot of the first page of the paper pdf

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Alongside presenting our paper, I'll also be attending @prosquared.org's "Are We Doing Enough" workshop on Tuesday and the workshop "AI for Haptics and Haptics for AI" on Thursday. See a summary of everything I'm doing at CHI here: davisonaudio.github.io/posts/2026/0...

davisonaudio.github.io

ACM CHI 2026

I’ll be at the upcoming ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Barcelona from the 13th to the 17th of April!

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

If you're attending CHI, catch my talk on Wednesday in the “Co-Design in Motion & High-Stakes Contexts” paper session (11:15AM-12:45PM in P1 - Room 111, my talk is 12:03PM). If you're not in Barcelona, catch a video of the presentation at the link above! (preview photo from CockneyCHI 2 weeks ago)

Matt presenting the CHI paper (with the title screen on the projector) at CockneyCHI on the 24th of March at the Dyson School of Design Engineering library

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

The paper details a design study where we gave digital musical instrument designers a "HaptiCoupler" kit that we created, which can enable simultaneous vibrotactile output and vibration sensing. We discuss the implications of bidirectional tactile interaction on instrument design.

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

10 days to go until we have Kathy Hinde visiting the lab for a seminar! Catch the livestream on the day at 2pm UK time using this link: youtube.com/live/3Yv4_33...

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

First time recording a piano in a while – and this one was full of electromagnets! Great fun last week recording audio for @apmcpherson.bsky.social's Magnetic Resonator Piano with @xeniapestova.bsky.social playing, along with some fun other Augmented Instruments Lab creations. Videos coming soon!

Me crouched down with headphones on looking at the recording laptop while Adam is filmed playing his LDTM setup

A table with speakers, audio interface, and recording laptop

The magnetic resonator piano behind a video light

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Andrew McPherson @apmcpherson.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

One week left to apply to this PhD studentship! Fully funded, covers fees and stipend; UK home student applicants only (due to funder rules).

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Andrew McPherson @apmcpherson.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

I'm recruiting a PhD student for autumn 2026 on a project on accessibility in musical instrument design, in partnership with disability arts charities OHMI and Drake Music. Application deadline 15 February 2026. More info and contact details: liss-dtp.ac.uk/project/inst...

liss-dtp.ac.uk

Instrument design by and for disabled musicians: the roles of technical discourse and vernacular creativity - LISS DTP

PhD project summary: An estimated 16 million people in the UK live with a disability (DWP statistics 2023), of which 48% have mobility impairments and 25% have impaired dexterity. Traditional […]

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

Find all the details (including schematic, audio examples, etc) in the paper here: dafx25.dii.univpm.it/wp-content/u...

dafx25.dii.univpm.it

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

We demonstrate the idea by replacing the diodes in a Boss DS-1 distortion pedal with our synthetic impedance system, while keeping the rest of the system in the analog domain. This provides a proof of concept, but there's lots more exciting ideas to explore!

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

By measuring the voltage at a node and actuating a currently, any two port electrical component (or network of components) can be simulated digitally in an otherwise analog circuit. This presents a customisable electrical impedance to the circuit, which can be reactive, non-linear, etc.

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

Great to have the opportunity to present a paper by @francisco-bernardo.bsky.social, myself, and @apmcpherson.bsky.social at DAFx 2025: "Impedance Synthesis for Hybrid Analog-Digital Audio effects". The work, led by Francisco, integrates digital systems into analog circuits bidirectionally.

Matt at a podium with a projected title slide behind him, presenting at DAFx conference

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Andrew McPherson @apmcpherson.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

NIME 2026 is coming to London! 23-26 June 2026. General chairs Courtney Reed (Loughborough University London, Augmented Instruments Lab alum) and me. More details soon!

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Great to have demoed the HaptiCoupler kit at #lac2025 yesterday. Lots of great insight and creative ideas from people trying it out. This kit is open source, find all the files (firmware, schematics, PCBs etc.) in the GitHub repo here: github.com/davisonaudio...

The HaptiCoupler demo setup with two HaptiCoupler kits - one standalone and one connected to a host computer, along with an information poster

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

It's a device designed for interacting with resonant synthesis models! It can either work standalone (synthesis running on the Teensy) or with a computer running the synthesis (USB audio connection). The device provides vibration feedback from the model as well as simultaneous tactile sensing!

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

(2/2) Find out more about the kit at the GitHub repo here: github.com/davisonaudio.... Get in touch if you want to borrow a kit to experiment with!

A poster briefly describing the HaptiCoupler kit. The kit uses a Teensy 4.0 and a MAX98389 class D amplifier along with a voice coil transducer.

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Matt Davison @mdavison.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

(1/2) I'll be presenting a demo of the HaptiCoupler device at the Linux Audio Conference in Lyon this week! ( jimlac25.inria.fr ) The HaptiCoupler is an open source kit that enables bidirectional tactile interaction with digital resonant synthesis instruments

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Andrew McPherson @apmcpherson.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

PhD opportunity: I'm recruiting a PhD student in digital musical instrument design at Imperial College London. Applications now, start date in the autumn. Funding is limited to UK home students. More topic details to follow. Interested? Email me with a CV! andrew.mcpherson@imperial.ac.uk

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Andrew McPherson @apmcpherson.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

First Bsky post, first lab paper of 2025! "On mapping as a technoscientific practice in digital musical instruments" -- a dive on the history and critical implications of mapping theory, with speculation on possible futures. Forthcoming in JNMR: instrumentslab.org/data/andrew/...

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