This week, I received my optron mini and got a chance to start using it.
To begin, the presentation was fairly professional for what it was. The optron logo was taped on the carboard box, and that was the only marking on the outside. Upon opening the box, the optron was held by either side with carboard stands. There was a paper in the bottom with a link for the information page on how to start using the device. The optron also came with a micro USB cord, which is always nice to include.
When handling the optron, I thought that the pressure sensor and fret sensor both felt pretty good, and I was surprised at how rigid the frame of the device was. The light bar looks really nice and bright, and the opaque cover adds to the presentation. I did think however, that the optron was a bit difficult to hold onto. The handle on the end of it is hard to grab because the cord that plugs into it comes right out alongside it, so you sort of have to hold on to both and you also need to be careful that you aren’t holding the cord too firmly.
Next, I went ahead and tried to use the optron mini with max 8. This process was relatively straight forward. When setting up the optron mini with max 8, I followed along with the recorded zoom calls to figure out what to do. I had some troubleshooting to do, but it was pretty minor and once I figured it out, it was working fine.
I proceeded to go on to the out-of-box demos. I was disappointed to find the “Rock on!” demo was acting very unresponsive/laggy and was having some deeper rooted issues making it not work as intended. I think there may be some revisions for the software necessary to make it work properly. It may be because I have a windows computer, but I cannot be sure.
I went through the optron basic tutorials, and most of them worked as intended, except for the “make sounds” tutorial. I could not seem to be able to interact with the patch generator as intended, so I could not do anything for that tutorial. I also thought that even though the tutorials were doing their best to explain what to do, I found it rather confusing and was unable to use patching tools to assign the optron mini as a midi instrument.
In terms of ease of access, I think there is a ways to go on this one. I still believe the concept of the instrument can be a great medium for young people that are being introduced to STEM education, but I was getting hung up far too often as well as experienced a lot of technical difficulties in trying to utilize the different aspects of the instrument with the program. The information provided with the optron mini does make a fairly linear path for you to follow, but I doubt any elementary school student would be able to make it all the way through the process of setting everything up and learning how to use it with max 8 without help from someone who had been through the process before.
Despite all of this, I look forward to spending more time with the optron mini and seeing what is possible to do with it as I become more familiar with the max 8 software.
