I’m designing an overlay and I’m attempting figure out how to get it to stay put. Alex (at sensel) was nice enough to send me an SVG template but it doesn’t have the magnet placement on it. Is there a way I can design for this?
Hello, we will be sending this information as part of the Overlay Creator Beta Program you are part of when it is available. In addition to design, the magnets require documentation and decisions by Sensel to help make sure custom overlays are continually supported in future versions. Thank you for your patience.
Hi
does that SVG file is available somewhere ? other than by Alex ?
if not, i think it be a great idea to put it somewhere! like to put innovator overlay template usable by graphic software ! it will save lot of time for many of us …
best
f
Hey after this amount of time, is there any way we can get specs on magnets for custom overlays?
I would also be really interested in this. As a basis, is the design available of all the magnets that are used to just hold the overlay? That it would still be recognized as no overlay? That could be a starting point.
While I don’t know if there’s more information elsewhere there appears to be a document and 3d model (STL) available that give a description of placement and orientation of the magnets. (Keep in mind is that the STL file actually contains 2 separate objects, so 3D printing as-is may not work.)
And while the PDF information is for the Innovators Overlay, if you can identify which of the locations on the Morph contain magnets for retaining the overlay, then it’d be safe to say that the remaining magnet positions are for encoding the overlay’s ID.
It appears that there are 8 magnets in the Morph, and 12 in the overlays (at least sometimes).
6 Morph magnets are the rectangular ones (4 top, 2 bottom), and there are two circular ones in the bottom corners. Along with holding the overlay in place, the N-S alignment of the magnets means that overlays cannot easily be installed spun around 180˚ and stay in alignment. A well thought out design.
In the magnet diagram it shows 4x additional single pole (aligned to the surface) circular magnets in the Innovator Overlay just next to the magnets in each corner. The left-hand ones are N-poles, and the right-hand side are S-poles. I’d guess those are what communicate the overlay’s ID to the Morph. If it’s detecting N/S/no-magnet at each of those spots then the number of possible unique overlays would be 3^4=81
Hey all, I just wanted to chime in here with a few additions.
- If you put an unrecognized arrangement of magnets on the Morph, then it would be recognized as invalid and would not load any Overlays. We would not like to load No Overlay since, for instance, someone who is getting a new Buchla Overlay would have it load up as No Overlay before they did a firmware update.
- There can be thousands of unique magnet arrangements on the Morph for Overlays.
We are excited to see the discussion around customization of the magnets on the Morph and we will strive to provide more information when we can. Thank you for your patience.
2.Hmmm… well the bottom two non-retention magnets appear to be consistent in polarity and position, but the top two vary. It looks like there are 4 positions per magnet, though it’s possible other overlays place the magnets closer and could then hold 9 positions (non-overlapping). And assuming a single configurable circular magnet in each quadrant…
(2 polarities * 4 discrete positions)^4 = 4096 unique position sets, which checks out.
I suppose if the overlays are indexed sequentially it’d make sense that the first 64 overlays wouldn’t need two of the magnets to change, which would explain why the bottom two non-retention magnets match across the overlays. The top-left appears to have the most variation positionally, so that’s perhaps the least significant 3 bits, with the top-right being the next higher bits. And then the bottom two being the higher remaining 6 bits.
Looking forward to news in that regard! Have a number of custom overlays by now that would work even better with magnets.
@NothanUmber What additional information are you looking for?
Questions would be
- where have the magnets to be placed to encode which information
- which magnets are supposed to be used (and where to get them from)
- how should the IDs be organized to prevent clashes? Is there e.g. an “address range” for unofficial user overlays or would we have to register a “free slot” with Sensel etc.
And support to define custom overlays with magnet-encoding in SenselApp would be nice of course 
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Ahah. Yeah, we’ll have to wait for that functionality to be available in the device and in the app 
I’ve postulated (above) as to the magnetic encoding scheme, but we probably won’t get confirmation one way or the other until the firmware & software are ready.
It’s certainly an interesting problem to solve - only being able to define perhaps 4096 unique overlays. It’d be one thing if each individual person made and encoded their own, and made sure that they didn’t have any internal conflicts in the magnetic ID. But it’s a different matter altogether if Sensel wants to keep a public repository of their own so that people can sell their own overlays with unique IDs. They’d need to have each person request a unique ID for their overlay, probably with some fee, and that person could use the ID for that particular overlay… Anyway it’s certainly an interesting business choice that I assume they’ve either made or will make at some point.
But yeah, it’s currently a waiting game in the meantime.
Hi, just wondering if there’s been any movement on this? It would be very good to know at a minimum which positions are safe to put magnets in if we just want it to locate properly. Ideally, polarity to be recognised as Inventor’s overlay would be very useful too.
Additional support from Sensel is unlikely anytime soon - they don’t appear to have the resources/inclination. As such see this post for a link:
The “document” link’s last page shows the magnet placement and polarity needed to emulate the Innovator Overlay.
As for the types of magnets - I believe the square/rectangular ones in the diagram are for holding onto the Morph, while the circular ones are for coding which overlay is present. For info see my other message in this thread:
Hi @alex could Sensel provide which magnets are for holding and which magnets are for encoding? Then eager people could experiment more easily with new layouts. Because the current methods of fastening to the innovators overlay or Sensel don’t really work for me. Thanks a lot!
While you wait for a response from Sensel you could just see which magnets are present in the Morph. Those would be for mechanical retention.
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You can see the magnet layouts for the Innovator’s in this document. The square/rectangle ones are for holding the Overlay in place. The circle ones are for identifying the Overlay. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kN70wA4Vi7Ol88b5CRPtEdXD8ndPgy0d/view?usp=sharing
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We currently do not have a way of creating new Overlay magnet layouts for use on the Morph. Only the Innovator’s can be reproduced to create custom Overlays.
Thanks Matt!
Does this mean:
- if I put some of the square/rectangular magnets in, it will show up as No Overlay, but be held in place
- if I put all of the magenets in, as shown on the PDF, it will show up as Innovator’s Overlay
Also - if it’s just the circles that identify, there are 4 of them, so it’s 2^4 possible overlay configurations, i.e. 16? Or 3^4 if you can also do no magnet giving 81 possibilities?
Sensel has specifically not described how they encode the specific IDs of the overlays for whatever reason. After comparing my different overlays, and noting Sensel’s comment about my previous numbers being wrong, I made a guess at how it works. Coincidentally my updated guess drew no comments about being wrong, so interpret that as you will.
So to summarize, I compared the magnets in a bunch of different overlays. All had 4 magnets for the ID. Each magnet was in one of four locations in their respective corner. And I believe they could be N or S side down.
