sparkfun tour!
This June I took a Friday afternoon tour to Sparkfun， organized by their new education department.
Greeting us at the entrance is a robotic dinosaur!
Like all hackers， we started with a grill…
Ninja dart attack!
Never knew this, but if you take lilipad parts out of the PCB board， what is left would work as ninja darts! Photo shot in their workshop space.
Testing driver board for stepper motors. Grrrrrr…..
BlackBelt
BlackBelt is a wearable gadget that augments martial actions with cinematic sound effects.
Inspired by Kung Fu costumes, the gadget takes the form of hand wraps, with electronics embedded inside fabric. Out of a total of five, four are wrapped around wrists and ankles, each embedded with a sensor that detects wearer’s strike. One has a speaker, and is worn around waist. The waist belt communicates wirelessly with the four limbs, and plays striking sound effects when action is taken. All sounds effects are pre-recorded and saved on a SD card. Just wrap on BlackBelt and play!
The dramatic sound effect creates an instant reward to movements, leaving an augmented yet compelling experience. Players can easily extend the fun by changing the sound files to drum beats, musical notes, and other sound effects. BlackBelt can potentially be used in motor skill rehabilitation.
Premiere at Superhero Custome Show at the 5th ACM SIGCHI Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, Maderia, Portugal.
Collaborated with Ying-Jung Chen, Huaishu Peng, Kuanju Wu.
Setup Xbee with xbib-u board
download driver for xbib-u
so far I haven’t got it working with win7, but here is the instruction for winXP
http://forums.digi.com/support/forum/printthread_thread,938
Config X-CTU
go to modem configuration
Click “read”
all settings other than those listed below should be left at the default value.
usb dongle – controller
ID (PAN ID) – 777
PAN ID should be same for all xbee chips in one kit
MY (source address) – 1
controller address should be 1
CE (coordinator enable) – 1
controller should have coordinator enable bit set
A2 (coordinator association) – 6 (110b)
bit 0 – 0 – no reassign PAN ID
bit 1 – 1 – reassign channel
bit 2 – 1 – allow associate
Click write to write to central device flash
Then repeat these to set up all end devices
hub – end device
ID (PAN ID) – 777
PAN ID should be same for all xbee chips in one kit
DL (destination address low) – 1
should be set to low address byte of controller
MY (source address) – [unique address > 1]
each end device should have a unique address
I used 2 3 4 5
A1 (end device association) – 6 (0110b)
bit 0 – 0 – no reassign PAN ID
bit 1 – 1 – reassign channel
bit 2 – 1 – auto associate
bit 3 – 0 – no poll on wake
Pasted from <http://philetus.code.arc.cmu.edu/index.php?title=Set_parameters_for_zigbee_transceiver_in_each_posey_hub>
connection for xbee
Pin 1 (Vcc) – 3.3V
Pin 2 (UART data out) – connects to RX pin of arduino/serial port
Pin3(UART data in) – connects to TX pin of arduino/serial port
Pin10 (gournd)
Pin15 (associate indicator) – connects through a led and a resistor to ground
For end device, LED is steady when xbee is first plugged in. Once it finds a controller, led begins to flash.
DEBUG
Set up a PC with serial monitor (e.g. realterm) and talks to the controller xbee.
Then connect the end devices to arduino with RX, TX and 3.3V power, plus ground. In the arduino program, use Serial.write to send 1-byte data.
Data should show up in serial monitor.
COMMON MISTAKE
- Things are showing up, but not what i sent.
+ Double check baud rate. xbee has a default rate of 9600. this should be the same as that of the serial terminal.
-nothing shows up.
+make sure the serial port is set up right.
+ on serial/usb converter, lights would flash when data is received. if not, check if RX and TX is reversed.
+ sending char that has a value <30 (?) will not show up
New Year’s Card
I made some new year’s cards out of the google voice sms conversation for a few friends. Here is one for my roommate. Looks like I’m constantly inviting her to dinner at home while she is still in class.
labmate. working hard and playing hard
with family. almost look like a life log….
acquiring google map api key
1. run cmd
navigate to D:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_22\bin in cmd line
(to change root directory- d: )
2. find the keystore file
assume it is in C:\Users\[useraccount]\.android\
3. run keytool
in cmd line, type in
keytool -list -alias androiddebugkey -keystore C:\Users\[useraccount]\.android\debug.keystore -storepass android -keypass android
4. For reference on API -
http://code.google.com/android/add-ons/google-apis/reference/index.html
Example Using Google Maps in Android
http://www.devx.com/wireless/Article/39145/1954
cybernetics…or, super hero
Interestingly, Kevin Warwick, professor of cybernetics at University of Reading, visited CMU the same week we read Bruce Sterling’s vision of the SPIME. Kevin talked about his research projects, including the ones in which he implanted a nerve-computer interface in his body.
In his view, the technology expands the input and output human beings can get. On one hand, we could sense things we weren’t able to before ( “ Who is not envious that your television can see infrared but you can’t?”). Kevin spent 6 weeks to learn to interpret ultrasonic sensor input, and to use it to avoid obstacles. “Yes!” One would immediately infer that blind people can benefit from this. (Actually, Electronic Lollipop is already doing it.) How about feeling hazards, such as radioactivity? If a firefighter can see the temperature, and know what’s about to explode, could that be a form of super power of seeing the future? “More than 50 years ago, Austrian researcher Ivo Kohler gave people goggles that severely distorted their vision: The lenses turned the world upside down. After several weeks, subjects adjusted – their vision was still tweaked, but their brains began to process the images so they’d appear normal. In fact, when people took the glasses off at the end of the trial, everything seemed to move and distort in the opposite way”( sensory prosthetics, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp_pr.html) Could we merge some 6th sense into people’s existing sensors, or use some less occupied ones (like Electronic Lollipop)?
On the other hand, we could extend our impact to a new level. Kevin showed a robotic arm connected to the human body. It could be engineered to mimic a human arm. It might as well be 100 times stronger. It doesn’t even need to connect to the human body (I was imagining Ian Ingram’s “YOU ARE NO. 1 “ installation, hmm…) . “Your body gets as large as the internet goes”. Potentially, yes. A more interesting question is, if each body is an I/O node, what can we get out of the whole network? Are we more intelligent? More powerful? How do we show it in a costume design, and deliver the idea in a show?
Coincidently, TEI student design competition is calling for superhero suit. I see an intriguing opportunity to make a statement on this topic. It’ll be fun to stop by Kevin Warwick’s lab and show my vision of the future.
“what do you want to be?”
it’s all about display
This particular display caught my eyes in Ivan’s report from CES2010 :
“Experia phone from Sony Ericsson that had half transparent screen, which looked very nice, designy and conceptual.”
Now you can type from the back of your cell! I had always want to make a phone with keyboard on the back, since a lot of us don’t need to look at keyboard anyway (more true in China where we’re crazy about texting). Now with this translucent screen, you even get visual feedback where your finger is.
Planck’s Duck
Planck’s constant, the size of quanta, is the base of universe, defining substance, light, energy. With a different value, another universe can overlap with ours, yet not been sensed.
Modeled in Rhino. Material: CNC-milled foam, plastic, paint.
acrylic
some experience shared by fish tank maker:
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/diy_acrylic.php
making things interact final show
Final Show of Making Things Interact this semester!
Inspired by the post board layered by all sorts of posters, I made this poster of posters…
Ian’s Who’sWho
Ken Rinaldo
with an list of artists working with robots/RP/interaction.. etc
Ken Goldberg
Robotics prof at UC Berkeley
LEE BONTECOU
sculputure mounted on wall; acrylic fish
video processing
software
1. frame by frame motion detection (FD)
2. background substraction (BD)
3. with some noise threathhold
0.1*FD + 0.9* BD = GD
dilate -fix holes..
erode -cut the outline
4. contour finder
hardware
projector projects no infrared light. nor fluorescent lights. therefore, by using exposed b+w film as filter on monochromic camera, we can avoid feedback problem of projected image.
BNC connector + mechanical convertar -> RCA connector -> computer
super circuit camera connector + clamp to mount it anywhere
KJ’s project?
Words from Beyond Hope
Words from Beyond Hope is an attempt to visualize the last statement made by criminals shortly before they are executed.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice maintains a list of executed offenders’ last statements, along with their gender, racial, photo, crime and victims, even their unappetizing last meal request. I keep a collection of related links on my blog post here. A sample of the statement is here-
It strikes to me how the simplest words repeat in all the statements. This is partly due to, as Golan pointed out, their limitation on education. Partly, I think, because it’s the most honest statement flowed right out of their mind, with no rhetorical decoration.
My design try to strike a balance between reserving the repelling reading experience and showing the similarity shared among all those executed. I envisioned a canvas with words appearing at the rate of heart beat, and a bit kinetic effect to resemble heart beat and life, and time elapsing. Then the words gray out and scatter around the screen, disappearing a bit as the life did. With the font proportional to occurrence prequency, the piece immediately highlight the common words from all last statements at the first glance. If viewer stays with it, they could read the statement words by words, as if viewing the writing composing them. In this way new information are conveyed to viewer and the interaction can carry on for a longer period of time.
Although a number of compromises had to be made in the final piece, one detail comes out as a little surprise to me. The collection of the most common words seems to form a message that is almost the average of the statement themselves.
Image below: at a glance, you’ll read ” I love you all”,”god love you all”, “I love my family”, “thank you”… the very phrases that’ll stay in your head as you read the actual statement.
NEXT STEP
The discrete words popping don’t do a great job suggesting they’re actual readable sentences and lose the power of the raw statement. Giving them a smooth in and out and allow them to stay “in focus” for longer may be a quick fix to encourage actual reading.
Golan’s suggestion for life
“If you get a good idea, it’ll be ripped someday. Be ready. “
demonstrated in his blog post showcasing pairs of exotic new media art and current commercial version.
On getting connected in art world
Archives, lists and compilations of new media projects:
- Ars Electronica Archives + on Vimeo
- [DAM] Berlin Archives
- Fondation Langlois: Artists and Projects
- MediaArtTube on YouTube
- Netzwissenschaft List
- OpenFrameworks Gallery [+Vimeo]
- Processing Exhibition
- RunMe Archive
- SoundToys.net
- Stephen Wilson’s lists
- Ubu Web Archive
Significant new media blogs:
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