Archive for the ‘Interactive Tinkering’ Category

Arduino: map floated values

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Some have you might have noticed that the extremely helpful map() function in arduino cannot cope with floated values. Since we really needed this functionality I wrote  a mapFloat() function (or actually simply adapted the existing function), which accepts floated values and outputs a floated value as well. Keep in mind that the range of the numbers you can use is smaller (in integer), so don’t use extremely large values and only use this if you require a floated value. I use this to map ledvalues from a range 0-255 to a range 0-1 (which is useful in many cases!).

float mapFloat(float x, float in_min, float in_max, float out_min, float out_max)
{
return (x - in_min) * (out_max - out_min) / (in_max - in_min) + out_min;
}

VRIJday post

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Friday morning was full of Tinkering and Designing!
We managed to sketch the storyboards for Timescale for our Lounge.
- Changing of the Floor in 5 minutes.
- The usage of the Lounge (2, 4 and 8 persons)
- KUDOs economy
- and variations of possible spatial planning

Tinkering came with nice result: the prototype was focused on communications between objects. How can they communicate with each other? How can users see/feel that? What will objects share between each other? What is the communication circle?
Our first step was to send a typical message from one object to another (for example it could be a picture or text message)
We used 2 Arduinos (sending and receiving), 1 laser pen and 1 light sensor to send a picture 20×20 pixels. First we tried to send a picture by 30×30 pix but it was taking too long.
The principle of the installation is as following:
-we used a self made program to break a photo into pixels and then send it to arduino1 and arduino1 sends this pixels arduino2 using a laser.
-the laser uses a code, sending lights to a sensor of arduino2: short for 0 and long for 1.

Users can influence this communication breaking the code by not letting the light to reach the sensor.

if you disrupt the light very quickly then pixel will change it’s color, and if the disruption will take longer then pixel will be erased.
This way communication can be pure (only object to object) or interfered (user-object)>>interactive

Pianissimo Algorithmico & Household appliances

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

I tried the pianissimo algorithmico™ on my home computer which has a much better MIDI controller, at least it doesn’t sound like a tin can anymore. So I figured I could record some and put it up, if you have a dire need for music you statistically probably haven’t heard before, this is your chance:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/443282/intenv/PianissimoAlgorithmico.wma

Yay for tinkering, since my lampcap was broken and it was giving really annoying harsh light, given the record of funky-functionality coffeecups have provided in the past, I opted for just putting one on. This was a really bad idea since it was 75W it soon started burning, though the light was quite nice. So i got myself some 25W lamps, fitting and wiring. I added 3 spacers on the inside and then another cup to form a whole, this prevents the bulb from touching the cup. Alternatively since it was halloween I could have cut in a face, but I didn’t. Other translucent stuff will work well I guess, maybe try glass sometime.
So if you want to make a lamp for 3 E or so, this works pretty well.
small lamp
big lamp

Next on my list is blinking LEDs in beer-bottles, should be good. Stay tuned.

Joris

Piano response to MIDIpiano of G.E.N.

Saturday, October 31st, 2009

I got this video in my mail today. I think it’s a nice response to the MIDI piano we saw at the Tinkering presentation by G.E.N. last week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

(please anyone with admin-rights embed the video on the blog)

Visualizing RFID – Immaterials: the ghost in the field

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

This morning I stumbled across this very interesting article about an arttech project.

link: http://www.nearfield.org/2009/10/immaterials-the-ghost-in-the-field

This video (link below) is about exploring the spatial qualities of RFID, visualised through an RFID probe, long exposure photography and animation. It features Timo Arnall of the Touch project and Jack Schulze of BERG.

Immaterials: the ghost in the field from timo on Vimeo.

sCAPE – development of a sensor range measuring tool

Saturday, October 3rd, 2009

Hi all,

I am developing a MAX/MSP patch that should give us more accurate control over our sensor inputs. A lot of sensors have different (useful) ranges and behaviours. If the development of this patch succeeds we may have better control over the input and thus more useful inputs.

I am currently working on:
- preferred range
change active sensor range (serial) of 180 – 220 to lets say: 0 – 255
- filter sensor spectrum
if you only want to measure between 40 and 60, range out 0-40 and 60-100 (in case of 0-100 sensor range)

I am thinking on implementing the following in the future:
- magnetic neutral value as 0 value so magnetic positive and negative fields will both make the sensor increase it’s value compared to the neutral (0) value

If you have any suggestions, critique or comments please drop them!

sCAPE – Lighting Prototypes; not to be taken lightly

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Dear all,

I hereby want to thank all of you for the happy and inspiring times we had together, but after today’s work I really need to say goodbye: I quit.

Well, that was not far from what I thought after today. We have been working on the interactive lamp prototypes all day (so we did not have time to work on our Lounge concept) and split up in groups. Some of us were working on the balloon lamp (which seems to become quite as popular as the ecosystem idea) and others were working on the falling rain errr, lights. I was working on the living plant light a.k.a. bendable lamp (Inflexus Luminarium) together with a experienced coder.
We had some problems when we found out that one of the sensors on the prototype was not working. This was after we spent two hours on finding the right firmware and libraries for Arduino to communicate with MAX/MSP properly. In the end it turned out that the communication between the Arduino and MAX/MSP was working, but one of the sensor did not show any effect upon interacting with it.

Soo much for 6 hours of programming having a fully configurable Max patch when the sensors aren’t working. We should have gotten a Wizard of Oz prototype…..


We found out that we were not the only ones short on necesary materials for prototyping, the Blue Helmet army were also stuck in their campaign!

sCAPE – Evolution of a species

Friday, September 25th, 2009

Last week we developed the Bending Lamp into a Sun-Light (at the top of the evolution). Since we were not really convinced about it’s interactive properties we evolved the design of the lamp. The diagram above (click for larger version) shows the (chronological) evolution of the Inflexus Luminarium.

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sCAPE – Prototype refinements

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Today was filled up for the biggest part with preparing and presenting our ‘OV Chipkaart’ analysis. After the presentations and discussions, we decided to sit down and try to refine the prototypes we built earlier this week.

We came up with a number of ideas for both the ‘Falling Lights’ and ‘Balloon Bulb’ concepts, diverging and exploring a range of possibilities to consider. The plan is to do the same for the ‘Plant Lamp’ and then start converging the ideas into a second and improved prototype.

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sCAPE – Building prototypes

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

Today we really got into building models. We worked parallel with the group on several concepts of light, and managed to build some very interesting test models.

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