As a mechanical engineer, I really really want to work with hardware for this final project. I really want to get my hands dirty and machine something. Now that I am a little more familiar with Max/MSP, I am excited to use it for my final project. As someone who loves to explore new places, I was amazed to recently find out that my friend has never been to a lot of places in Pittsburgh even though he’s about to graduate in less than two months. It has never occurred to me that a good number of CMU students live in ‘CMU’ but not in ‘Pittsburgh’. I think Pittsburgh has a lot of potential, definitely a perfect city for college students. I have grown to love this city more and more every year, and I want people to feel the same way.
For this final project, I want to make something that maps the different places you go to in this city. I am thinking about making a wall map or a box, carved out a ‘map’ of Pittsburgh (does not have to be the exact map of the city, but shows different places like restaurants/museums/tourist attractions), and install LED lights. A GPS will track a place you have been, and lights will go off at that specific place.
The layout and the details of the map might change, but this is just a general idea of what I want to do. Here are some projects that will help me get started.
https://www.creativeapplications.net/maxmsp/skube-tangible-interface-to-last-fm-spotify-radio/
http://www.designsponge.com/2010/09/pittsburgh-city-guide.html