Week 7
Kate's Physical Computing Journal
Some Thoughts on the 7th week of Physical Computing....
Yulia, Idit, Pei-Chen and I have been working on our midterm project. We decided that we needed to get away from ITP (wood floors, white walls) so we went to Yulia's little apartment and worked. It was so much easier to concentrate there. Maybe too much technology is a bad thing...
http://projects.interaction-ivrea.it/endofyear/en/index.asp
Instead of researching a specific item or concept this week I decided to look at Ivrea. I wanted to see what the students there were making and hopefully find some inspiration. Here are just a few of the many interesting things I found that made me want to go out and create:
Pouring Light
http://projects.interaction-ivrea.it/endofyear/en/student/foundation/pouringlight.asp
For this project the students took two bowls and a pitcher. When a person performs the act of pouring the amount of light increases in the bowl that is directly underneath it. If a person holds one of the bowls as if they are pouring something out of it then the light dims inside the bowl. At first I thought that this would be impossible to make but when I took a little time I began to think of ways to do this. You could put a sensor on an area of the pitcher that would only line up when it is over the bowl. You could use tilt sensors to give you a value (at least I think, I've never worked with tilt sensors before so I could be wrong.
I just found this to be an interesting illusion. It brings about a diferent way to turn off lights or change the levels of lights in a room. There would be instant feedback from the brightness of the lights so the users would know that they had done something.
F + R Hugs
http://projects.interaction-ivrea.it/endofyear/en/student/desire/frhugs.asp
In this project the students used the question of how you can feel close to someone who you love who is far away? I was wondering if they started the project from this question or the question came after brainstorming. I like the idea with starting from a question. Sometimes I feel I need a little more direction in my thoughts.
To solve this problem the students came up with the concept of a clothing item that can make a person feel many of the sensations someone feels when they recieve a hug (heartbeat, breath, body temperature and hug strength). I think this is an interesting concept but in a way a little to literal. Instead of feeling a hug I would rather smell a scent or feel some warmth. I think that if you took anything and someone made it your own personal symbol, your own means of communication with that distant person then it could take on the meaning of closeness with them. If the signal was vague it would be a more subconcious experience. Maybe it would cause you to smile for no reason, or remember something you hadn't thought about in a long time.
Servomotors are complicated. They seem to like to be rewound???
Working in groups on large projects is extremely helpful.
Code from midterm (we are working with servomotors here):
Our concept was to make a toy for children who were scared of the dark. Our toy (scooby doo) is shaking because he is scared of the ghost. He chases the ghost with his flashlight until the ghost dies at which point he stops shaking. Here is the code and some pics:
' Program for ScoobyDoo
' motor vibrates until the switch is turned off
' when the switch is turned off, the LEDs light up
' pin 16 motor
' pin 19 switch
' pin 7 LED
' pin 8 another LED
dim switch as byte
dim pulsewidth as single
dim pulse as integer
Sub Main()
dim i as integer
call delay (0.5)
switch=getPin(19)
do
switch=getPin(19)
if switch=1 then
call putPin (12,0)
call putPin(16,1)
elseif switch=0 then
call putPin(16,0)
'call putPin (12,1)
'pulse the eyes
call fader (12, 1, 1000, 0.001)
delay (0.5)
'fade light off
call fader (12, 1000, 1, 0.001)
delay (0.5)
end if loop
End Sub
sub Fader (byVal pin as byte, byVal start as integer, byVal finish as
integer, byVal speed as Single)
'fade on condition
dim pulse as integer
if start<finish then
for pulse=start to finish
call PulseOut(pin, pulse, 1)
delay(speed)
next
'turn the pin on when done
call putpin(pin,1)
end if
'fade off condition
if start>finish then
for pulse=start to finish step-1
call PulseOut(pin, pulse,1)
delay(speed)
next
'turn off pin when done
call putpin(pin,0)
end if
end sub
Code for the ghost
'leds 15 , 16dim pulseRange
as single ' the range of possible pulses
dim sensorvalue as integer
Sub main()
call delay(0.5) '
pulseRange = maxPulse - minPulse
minPulse = 0.0008
maxPulse = 0.0022
pulseWidth = minPulse
refreshPeriod = 0.02
Mytimer = 1
call putpin(15,0)
call putPin(16,0)
' the main loop:
do
sensorValue = getADC(13)
call servo()
call lights()
loop
End Sub
sub lights()
if myTimer < 800 then
if getpin(15)=1 then
call putpin(15,0)
elseif getpin(15)=0 then
call putpin(15,1)
end if
if getpin(16)=1 then
call putpin(16,0)
elseif getpin(16)=0 then
call putpin(16,1)
end if
else
call putPin(15,0)
call putPin(16,0)
end if
end sub
sub servo()
if sensorValue > 20 then
Mytimer = Mytimer + 1
debug.print cstr(Mytimer)
if Mytimer < 400 then
' pulse the servo:
call pulseOut(7, pulseWidth, 1)
' increase the pulsewidth for the next pulse:
if pulseWidth <= maxPulse then
pulseWidth = pulseWidth + 0.00001
else
pulseWidth = minPulse
end if
end if
end if
end sub
Next week see pictures of project.
Sculpture
Carpet
How to create an illusion of nothingness