Jun-Looking Outwards

Touch screen (Nintendo DSL digitizer)
https://www.adafruit.com/products/333

This would be great for user interactive projects. I’m thinking of games, here.

Geiger Counter Kit – Radiation Sensor
https://www.adafruit.com/products/483

Just learned about Geiger Counters in physics last week. I find being able to detect random radiation particles quite interesting. Not sure what I’d do with this yet, but it would be cool to play around with… if it weren’t so expensive.

RGB Color Sensor with IR filter
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1334

Having color input could be very useful. Since sight is arguably our strongest sense, I could imagine a nice program being made with color inputs from this sensor that reacts similarly to how humans would react to certain colors.

IR distance sensor includes cable (20cm-150cm)
https://www.adafruit.com/products/1031

Another sensor that might be good for user-interactive projects. Might be a good combination with RGB Color Sensor.

Shiny New Toys

Programmable Coin Acceptor

This coin acceptor/validator module works with any coin. It determines if a coin is valid by looking at its diameter, thickness and dropping speed. One might conceive of an arcade-style gallery – an “artcade” – in which a viewer purchases a single viewing of an artwork with one or several quarters. Unlike the appstore, the artcade brings art enthusiasts together in a communal space. Unlike traditional art galleries, the artcade enables “everyone else” to engage with and support contemporary art in a tangible way. We might also envision an art tollbooth, where a passerby is charged a small fee to enter an installation.

 Conductive Knit Jersey

Conductive fabric raises the possibility of textile interfaces. According to the description on adafruit, the knit is actually a single strand of fiber. So if there is a tear in the thread – does the whole square unravel? Ignoring this for a moment, the fabric has many interesting uses in media art. Using a LilyPad Arduino to receive inputs and execute instructions, it becomes possible to invent interactive, “intelligent” clothing. For instance, a tap on the breast pocket of a shirt could trigger a program which conveys the current number of unread emails in one’s inbox. Tap, and wait for the ensuing jolts: “Ow! Ow! Ow! Three unread emails.”

Ultrasonic Range Finder

 

Maxbotix LV-EZ1 is an ultrasonic range finder. It emits a 42 kHz wave and records the time it takes for the wave to return to the module. Based on the speed of sound in air at sea level, the module calculates its distance from some object. I have one question: would an array of these work as a depth camera? This might be feasible if each device emitted a unique frequency, so that the modules working in parallel wouldn’t confuse each other. But I wonder – how might such a depth camera compare to a depth camera that uses IR?

 

Looking Outwards: Hardware

Pulse Sensor

I think the fact that you could have something sync up with a person’s pulse is in itself already the beginnings of great poetry. I also find it interesting that as a biometric DIY component, it begins to have implications for the market of medical devices. Perhaps in the future medical devices could be built as needed for cheaper, more easy to access by doctors that may be in more rural areas, instead of depending on the far-removed monopoly of medical device companies…

TFT Touch Shield for Arduino

I’m constantly being blown away by how easy it is to access all these amazing devices and components. Being so removed from the manufacturing process as a consumer it just blows my mind that I could build a physical interface and have access to these things like touch screen technology. It can give my users/participants a more natural form of interaction and navigation, depending on what my project is. On top of that I’m really glad that they make a note to tell you that the device comes with its own open source graphics library, further enabling one to explore and expand their personal project.

Flora Wearable GPS Module


For me, fashion has a strong connotation with identity. On top of that, having moved around different cities in my life, the idea of place is also very important to me. So to have something that tells you where you are on something that can portray who you are—it really speaks to me.

monkeysphere

{video and sketches pending}

When this assignment was first released, all I wanted to do was simulate a Monkeysphere. The program adds a “friend” every time you press any key. The most recent friend would take up the creature’s attention, thus the creature always keeps the most recent friend in its sight. Although this program was only supposed to be strictly simulation, things got a lot more personal once I started adding names since the names are of people I knew/know in real life. I started projecting, resulting in the part where you press the mouse and discover a sort of anxiety-ridden creature trying to escape the sphere but it can’t. At any rate, once you get to Dunbar’s number, the creature has hit its limit of “friends” and needs to take a break. Once you give it some time, it’ll return to befriend a new round of friends.

I think I’ll work on this a bit more to figure out smoother animations and of course, the freezing problem: the program randomly freezes during the second round of counting up to Dunbar’s number (it seems it’s 23?).

Adafruit Window Shopping

RGB Color Sensor with IR Filter

Color sensor! This can actually detect color, what? Becky Stern has a really awesome chameleon scarf tutorial on their tutorial site, this would be great for other computational fashion pieces. This would also be pretty cool for sorting/computer vision type things.

Magstripe Reader

Card readers! These look pretty fantastic, oh wow. I could see myself using these for like, a visualization of $$$ or an installation that requires users to give me money. I’ve never really messed around with card readers before though, and I’m sort of interested in seeing what kind of information is stored in the cards I carry with me daily?

Touch Screen (Nintendo DS)

When I was in middle school/early high school I was fascinated by DIY multitouch tables. I’m really surprised and pleased that Adafruit sells tiny touch screens for only $8! I’d love to make a tiny touch interface with something like this.

Looking outwards – Adafruit

Hey everyone, I am still sorting through everything that Adafruit has to offer but here are a few pieces of technology that really sparked my interest! The first one is this soil Temperature/moisture sensor at: https://www.adafruit.com/products/1298. This product is most likely what was used in my arduino looking outwards where they created a project that allowed plants to set off lights when they needed water. The project really stuck in my mind and with this product I can see that it was probably a fair bit more simpler to construct than I had previously thought. Of course this poses another good example for me that with a few pieces of tech, and even with a simple concept, an awesome project can be born. This soil sensor can also be used to sense change in the seasons depending on the soil or perhaps to sense weather conditions (wet soil vs. dry soil).

1298_MED

Something else that sparked my interest was the liquid flow meter at https://www.adafruit.com/products/828. This meter sits at the base of a water line and the water moves a pinwheel found inside of the object. The meter can then calculate what sort of flow the water has. This meter is interesting since it allows one to make computer work that can interact with water. This is probably difficult to do with electronics. This may be able to be used in conjunction with the ocean, rivers, lakes, sewers, or public bathrooms. Water flow may also be used with movable art (since the energy of the art may be affected).

ID828_MED

The flexible solar panel at https://www.adafruit.com/products/1485 , also intrigued me. A simple change to the pre-existing product of a solar panel can have wo many uses; For one, you can wear the panel as a bracelet and have the arduino be literally powered when in the palm of your hand. It may also be easier to hide many solar panel within and installation or public art in order to mask electronics like batteries or bulky wires. I’ll have to actually buy it to see if it can do all of the things I picture it doing but even so, I feel like a product like this has huge potential. It can even be used (perhaps) in conjunction with a lily pad arduino in order to make more wearable art.

1485_MED

Looking Outwards: Physical Hardware

So I have this camera, less than a centimeter tall…

camera

Namely,this little thing, which captured 640 x 480 video. Image the possibilities! For less than $10, one could essentially hide the controller for a Box2D application, for example. It goes without saying that this one is completely awesome.

…and this box which recognizes your voice…

As a follow up, I would also like to nominate this voice recognition software:

vrs

Firstly, it is available in multiple languages. I always thought it would be awesome to have a software which could translate a conversation between two people in real time. Although I realize one could not do that with this particular device, which only comes with one particular language at a time, it leaves the door open for thought. Second, one can potentially image having characters controlled by a particular individual’s voice. For example, a very high voice might control a skinny, small character whereas a very low voice might control a much larger creature. (Interactive ecosystem, perhaps?)

…and the capability to use it all underwater!

LED H2O button

This little button may not look like much at first glance, but an underwater LED glowing button is definitely a step up from your average on/off switch. Coupled with some underwater housing, this could be used to create an underwater projection or a smoke projection without compromising your equipment and easily being able to see how to turn your machine on and off. For the little inexpensive piece of technology this is, I feel it would be worth it.

Dave-LookingOutwards

1. Carbon Monoxide Sensor

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9403#images-modal

The possibility of such a tiny thing being able to be used to save many lives struck me. Of course, smoke detectors serve a similar purpose, but these can be used to alert even more people to come to others’ aids.

2. Heating pad

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11289

Besides heated clothing in the winter, we can use these from keeping food warm to making the toilet seat less painful to sit on during cold mornings.

3. Nunchucky

https://www.adafruit.com/products/345

The Wii Nunchuck takes in many different types of inputs from various kinds of physical interactions, and we can send them easily to Arduinos with this.

Augmented Projection

So, I knew where I wanted to do my projection: The underground. There are some fantastic-looking lamps around which I wanted to project different objects to interact with them. For example:  underground projection Underground -- SketchThese were two ideas I had. The first I was going to model using the box2D physics library to make things fall on top of/jump off the top of the lamps, and also potentially have one of the lamps as an attractor. The second I was going to model using springs, where the lamps would act as “anchors” and would radiate these lightening-like Van der Graff machine-like patterns. (Much spookier and season appropriate.)

So I started working on that. Here is the test projection I made in my dorm: test projection

This is only the first idea. It actually worked really quite well. Note that in this version I had not yet added the lower boundary which was the top of the sofas at the Underground just underneath the lamps. (I forgot about that until I got there.) Also note that in this version I am projecting the lamps onto the wall just so I can tell where they go.

Of course, the project I made was about 1m x 0.6m. The wall was considerably larger (and proportioned differently) — and the projectior failed utterly to project any kind of image at all. So I tried changing the location… which essentially meant everything I had done was invalid. i.e., not square.

So… here is a quick video where I just get one of the examples to work with another alternative surrounding I was thinking of trying to work with, since the first one didn’t work out:

Ticha-LookingOutwards-Sensors

1. Long Flex/Bend Sensor

According to the product description, the flex/bend sensor was popularized by Nintendo as a gaming interface for gloves. As the principal motion that our body makes is bending, the bend sensor offers many possibilities in which a device responds to body movements.

2. IR Distance Sensor

This sensor measures the proximity of objects. Despite its simplicity, it would be very useful for a number of projects – especially those involving robots or other machines that require methods of collision prevention.

3. Tilt Ball Switch

I was mostly drawn to this because it was dubbed “the poor man’s accelerometer” (and it’s only $2.00). Although it is not as powerful as a “rich man’s accelerometer”, its size makes it very convenient for small projects that require basic orientation/motion detection.