this is not a blog
{ Monthly Archives }
A short but sweet Flash vid for our Flash animation assignment. I present…Bee (Flash) Movie! Note: I did not do any of the illustrations, they were all found via Google. This is just a simple academic exercise!
I’m gonna put a link to it because I simply don’t know how to make it not start playing automatically!
Welcome to the ITP Equipment Room…where the toys come out and party at night. Sometimes, a little too hard…
We completed our prototype of the TuneDroppa. It consists of a cheap demo umbrella (the real one will be transparent and of a “bubble” design), one contact mic, one blue LED, and our breadboard/arduino setup. We also added a 3 watt amplifier and a 4″ speaker to amplify the tone that will be triggered by raindrops. The tone is currently being generated by the Arduino, but we’re hoping to use some 74C14’s as oscillators eventually. This is just a proof of concept, and it seems to be going well!
Made with Garage Band and a sample of Hugo Ball Sound Poetry (via ubuweb.com)…
NewsDroppa - Droppin’ the news with a hint of autumn…
So my Physical Computing midterm group (Taylor, Celina, Alex, and me) has decided on a project for the midterm. We’re not sure of the name yet, so for now I’ll just call it “Soundbrella”.
The basic ideas is to place contact mics on the panels of an umbrella. When a raindrop hits a panel, the contact mic will presumably detect it. A tone will be triggered and an LED (white?) will light up. A small speaker will be mounted to the inside of the umbrella, preferably above the holder, and the LED’s will (hopefully) dangle down from the frame. We anticipate using a clear “bubble” umbrella (http://umbrellastand.com/bubbleumbrella.html?gclid=CKqHs5bu8I4CFQIuHgodunTbJw) to provide a more immersive experience for the user, and for better acoustics. We also think it will be cool for the LED’s to be seen from a distance walking down the street.
I asked around for some sound generation options. Our original concept was to use an MP3 player of some sort, but Gian Pablo Villamil recommended using 74c14’s. They’re cheap, and they can be used with AD5206 digital potentiometers. He has previously worked on a project using a similar configuration, so he could become a very useful resource! I did find a 40 second programmable IC (http://store.qkits.com/moreinfo.cfm/ISD2540) which could also be used, but I’m not sure how to program it. I also found a “Polyphonic Ringtone IC” which contains a small MIDI synth (http://www.winbond-usa.com/en/content/view/166/1573/), but I doubt that it would work in this application, and we’d have to request a sample…which is apparently kind of hit-or-miss.
My duty at this point is to determine the materials requirements, except for the Umbrella itself…which is Celina’s job. After some research, I have determined that we will need the following:
6 - contact microphones - Alex says he can get these easily, and there are typically six fabric panels in an umbrella. We may need to add more, depending on the sensitivity per panel.
1 - arduino - we’ve all got one
2 - AD5206 Digital Potentiometers - this is a chip that contains 6 electronically-controlled potentiometers. (http://www.analog.com/en/prod/0,,761_797_AD5206,00.html)
1 - 74C14 Hex Schmitt Triggers - there are six triggers on the chip, and we can use one per contact mic to produce a square wave. Each wave’s frequency will be triggered by a digital pot. (http://www.datasheetarchive.com/preview/466481.html)
6 - LED’s (White) - these will be controlled by one of the digital pots. Hopefully we can do some slick stuff like fading them out. (see http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/SPIDigitalPot)
1 - audio amplifier - I already own a 3 watt amp kit, but that may be overkill.
1 - speaker - I also own a 1 watt speaker, as well as some small piezo speakers I scavenged from a couple of audio greeting cards.
Time to get to work!
For years I had been hearing of this wondrous book by a man named Marshall Mcluhan called “Understanding Media”. It was supposedly the end-all-be-all of treatises on “new” media…a prophecy written 30 years too soon. Since learning of it, I have wanted to read it…and now, I finally had the opportunity.
I think the most surprising aspect of the book was how obvious it was that McLuhan was an English Literature professor. Nearly all of his concepts were backed up by references to literary works. The one piece that he kept returning to over and over was Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. Unfortunately, I have never read Finnegans Wake, so most of the references were lost on me. In fact, most of the literary pieces he constantly invoked were unknown to me, aside from some Shakespeare. While this isn’t really important mcLuhan’s underlying concepts, the reliance on his literary background was the most astounding aspect of the book for me. Of course, had I known that he was an English Lit professor I would have been less surprised. But the fact that this seminal book, which has been quoted countless times in reference to the Information Age and new media, bases much of its content on the medium of print itself felt slightly ironic to me. Fortunately, McLuhan appears quite aware of this, and doesn’t try to beat around the bush in any way.
The other most interesting aspect to the reading is his introduction of new terms that seem so commonplace today. This is the most common notion that contemporary readers like to mention, and after having it pounded in my head for so long I expected to read the first mention of these phrases as if I was watching the birth of some historical persons being born. Sure, it was awe inspiring to see Phrases “global village”, “seamless web”, and “hybrid energy” in a book about media published in 1964. He truly was a visionary. I know that’s trite statement, but it didn’t hit me until I was reading. But what surprises me about some of those phrases was that we have altered some of their intended meanings to our own purposes…or, rather, to make them fit better in our own time. His notion of the “global village” had little to do with an individual’s ability to instantly communicate with and learn from cultures far outside his own. It was about the new fangled “jet airplane” and mass media through television. By this I mean McLuhan was considering the fact that SOME people can be transported vast distances quickly, and SOME media can reach vast audiences. But the consumers of these media were not able to respond…they are “hot” mediums, in his terms. It was only the EXISTENCE of these new media, and the effects they have on cultures, that elicited a global cultural shift. The notion that individuals were somehow living in a “village” was not really the point…unlike the way use the term today to describe our ability to interact with distant colleagues as if they were local.
I must say that I am extremely sad that McLuhan never had a chance to experience the internet. Most of his vision was focused on the new media of the time…radio and television. Yet many concepts are far better suited for the World Wide Web than they are for television. I wonder what he would say of it? Only one decade after the initial mass acceptance of the internet has the use of video become prominent. The medium has always been highly textual. His talk of Gutenberg technology being obsolete can now be considered way off base. If anything, the textual nature of the web, email, and messaging has solidified the printed word’s place as the anchor medium of our shared culture. In the end, I think this would make MCLuhan secretly happy. After all, his great love, and the focus of his professional life, was the medium of print.
So it’s been a while since I posted about the Physical Computing labs, but I wanted to document my progress with my attempt at creating something a bit more interesting than a potentiometer dimming an LED.
Lab 3 had us using a variable resistor to perform an action. So, I took my digital chopsticks and turned the aluminum-tip switches into a variable resistor! I used a voltage divider circuit to test the voltage of the item being held by the chopsticks. Thus, if the chopsticks were being used to hold metal, the “holding” LED would both be triggered…but only if it reached a certain threshold. The purpose is to test the theory that sushi has a certain level of conducivity, and I may be able to set the threshold to the level of sushi to trigger another action…
SERVOS! Lab 4 had us using a servo with the variable resistor. I thought about what I could do, and it seems that the servo would be a perfect solution for an automated soy sauce dispenser:
I had a tough time with this assignment…mostly due to the loop() method. My desired action was to have the servo perform a full cycle of its motion (pour then reset) once triggered, but I found it extremely difficult to keep it from stopping mid-pour or resetting prematurely if the Arduino did not detect a high enough voltage at the tops…such as when you let go of a conductive item. I eventually got it to work (mostly), as you can see.