Apr
9
The Powered Playground
April 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I’m still toying with the ideas and title behind this one with my team (Hulya, Drew, Ohad), but it’s essentially tying together some of the concepts I’ve covered in three of my classes this semester. Here it is in a nutshell:
Concept and Prototype: Generator See-Saw
(sustainable energy, working title of course)
Building on my midterm proof-of-concept, a common, well-known playground structure is used to generate energy through simple physics and mechanics. The action of the mechanism rotates a motor and subsequently generates a voltage. The voltage is stored in a capacitor through a circuit that includes a bridge rectifier to capture the generated energy on both turns of the motor. This working prototype will be recreated with a new, stronger frame, a larger DC motor with greater torque, and a larger capacitor. Indicator LEDs will provide user feedback regarding the energy created and stored. An outlet will be wired into the circuit to allow common, daily devices to charge by draining the capacitor. Through simple, fun, social, and collaborative interaction, children will be encouraged to both play and learn about sustainable energy solutions.
Larger Proposal
Extending on this simple working component, we propose developing a plan for a new “energy harvesting playground” model. This playground will be populated with devices that encourage physical activity while mechanically generating and storing energy. Potential components at this stage include swing-sets and merry-go-rounds.
Placement
(media arch)
A possible venue for this project is the new JetBlue terminal at JFK airport. Currently under development and construction, the terminal is slated as being the first airport terminal created since September 11th. Considering the forward-looking nature of this construction, we propose including an iteration of the “sustainable playground” in the terminal. For JetBlue, this is a unique opportunity to be green, encourage sustainability, and strengthen its brand. At the same time, it provides JetBlue passengers with a useful, positive play-space suitable for both children and adults.
Additional Sponsorship
(interactivity for all)
A secondary goal and/or proposal is to extend the “sustainable playground” into an educational experience. As a satellite exhibit of a local science center or museum, this project offers an ideal opportunity for off-site advertising, visibility, and sponsorship for the partner institution. Users have the added bonus of an educational experience that enlightens them on the nature of energy and a chance to consider sustainable living in daily life.
Apr
9
The lost class
April 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Last semester in an attempt to organize, I made the stupid decision to separate my Comm Lab blog from my PComp blog. I’m trying to tie together all the pieces now. Here is one of the more amusing projects that came out of the class:
stop motion animation created by Dan Imal and myself, sub-title: Bead Madness
Apr
8
Dropping Fortunes on New York City
April 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I developed a proposal earlier this semester with my stellar teammates Daniel Liss and Ana Gutierrez. We developed a site-specific plan to release thousands of printed fortunes on the financial district. Ideally occurring over the period of a year, this project would be a celebration of the ephemeral and a meditation on the nature of life and time. Additionally, it’s a tongue-in-cheek look commentary on finance and globalization. We’ve documented the proposal on the class wiki here.
Apr
8
Where are we now?
April 8, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Throughout this semester, I’ve been asking myself the question above. I think it’s healthy to have some reflection on where all this interactive play is going and to force me to get back to the basics of what I’m interested in. For starters:
Movement should not be taken for granted
In the digital age, let us not forget the corpus. I tried putting together a portfolio in the past couple weeks and it’s been difficult because my varied experiences seem so very varied. But I have noticed a trend: I’m constantly creating work or involving myself in projects that encourage or promote physical experiences. Our body is the conduit through which we experience everything. We should not limit this to static interactions with screen-based media. The world is big. And fun. And hopeful. And needs our attention.
Space is key
Space affects our psyche. The area surrounding us (above, below, peripherally) deeply affects our emotional state. This is not limited to walls and structures, but to atmosphere, light, sound. Space shapes our sensibility of a place by shaping our sensory input. We should take more care in how we inhabit and use the world.
The bigger picture is more interesting
There is an encouraging trend toward the life examined. Especially in a dense urban environment, we often get caught in the life rushed and full of doing. Perhaps it would be better to more carefully consider why we create and use what we do. Otherwise, the ever-present question in my life: why?
I should get better at documenting my projects
This is obvious. So much of what I’ve made has been lost to whim and my resistance to documenting over doing and experiencing. I’m trying to fix that. Starting with (sigh) blogging and just taking daily notes.
So, until next time…
Mar
26
Energy Harvesting See-Saw
March 26, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Play and Power
The Problem
In our discussion of kinetic energy harvesting solutions, Drew and I both found an unfortunate trend in the existing energy generating devices: if human powered, most solutions are solo operations and while virtuous, not very fun. In essence, they feel like work. How, we wondered, can we strike upon a solution that is social, cooperative, and fun?
The Solution
We came to the see-saw after some false starts in other areas, but settled on this device because:
a) it uses the strength and weight of 2 people
b) it has a well defined and understood range of motion
c) they’re loved by children for a reason: they’re fun (when was the last time you played on a see-saw?)
In creating our prototype, we made an adult-sized see-saw with a larger range of motion than those typically designed for playgrounds. This was achieved by raising the height of the fulcrum point to allow the plank to rise and fall an additional few degrees. This addition, we found, made a substantial difference in the voltage output of the motor. The rise and fall of the plank turns a flywheel-belt mechanism to turn the motor, which is a DC gearbox motor. We built a very simple circuit that essentially fills a small 2200µF capacitor on both turns of the motor through the addition of a bridge rectifier. For our prototype, we have 2 indicator LEDs that are being powered directly by the opposing motor turns and 1 more that is taking voltage from the capacitor.
Energy Analysis
With the components we currently have, we calculated that the observed power of our mechanism is 0.0014 W/s. Given a larger motor with a higher gearing ratio and/or more torque along with a much larger capacitor, this device could be much more efficient and powerful. In our next iteration of this project, we’ll look into these possibilities.
Dec
21
Single White Android
December 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment
BRIEF SYNOPSIS
My final for Intro to Physical Computing was a life-sized robot called Single White Android (SWA), created in collaboration with Jason Krugman and Scott Hoffer. He (it is male because the face is male, not because of any gender defining characteristics or attributes) was an exercise in creating an interactive object of no particular use except to elicit a confusing emotional reaction from the viewer. The interaction is very simple. Touch SWA’s glowing stomach, and you trigger a chain reaction of “happiness” — the video face smiles, the body brightens to full wattage, and the motorized arm reaches for you when you release your hand from the stomach as if to say, “come back.”
CONCEPT
My thinking behind the project was to play with a few different ideas in a humorous and engaging context. After a lot of back and forth about what to make, we finally settled on the SWA because of a series of discussions about loneliness in the digital age. The human condition of loneliness of course stretches far beyond the digital age, but seems exacerbated by it because our attempts at communication through current mediums is more isolating than not in terms of the physical experience. Skyping on a computer to a distant friend is never as rewarding as visiting them, and really, is virtual anything as good as the real thing? I concede that I prefer physically removed engagements like text messaging or emailing when I would prefer not to see someone, but that’s another situation entirely. From this point of loneliness, we also became fascinated with people who prefer the company of inanimate objects to other people (see the Guys and Dolls documentary at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3710987618964917848). This all led to our idea of creating a robot whose own “emotional state” depended on the presence of a person.
MATERIALS AND CONSTRUCTION
SWA is made entirely from, wood (the skeleton), styrofoam, bubble wrap, newspaper, rice paper (for a skin-like, blood vessely effect), Saran Wrap (a lot), 3 strings of white Christmas lights for the body, a plastic dome for the belly, 2 red incandescent light bulbs for inside the belly, a repurposed LCD screen (face), our trusty QT 113 capacitance sensor, 2 servo-motors, 2 dimmer switches attached to the servo_motors, and a 24V DC motor (for the moving arm).
Constructing the entire project took quite some time, but the circuitry, as expected, took the longest. Jason put together a nice diagram of our convoluted circuit: http://jasonkrugman.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/circuitrydiagram.jpg
The motor and electrical issues surrounding it were beyond the scope of our knowhow, but with many thanks to the significant help we received from various sources (shoutout to Greg), it all worked somehow.
In its final state, the QProx sensor triggered everything. The default state of SWA was a pulsing red stomach, dim lights throughout the body, a static body, and a video face run through Processing that looped a segment of a movie clip with a sad face (thanks Scott). When a touch was registered on the stomach (thanks copper mesh), the servos dimmed up the Christmas lights in the body, the Processing code jumped to the happy segment of the video and looped that instead, and when the touch and release was registered, the DC motor in the arm was triggered to high until the potentiometer attached to it reached a certain reading.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
The most fun part about this poject was watching people very clearly understand the interaction with this object. I have always tried to create work that speaks very immediately to people, and while I haven’t always suceeded, I feel that this project was a sucess in that regard. We had the good luck to showcase SWA in the Winter Show, and it was interesting to watch people react with either abject horror or delight to SWA. With more experience, we could’ve fleshed out the interaction into something more complex and providing more narrative, but that’s for next semester.
Nov
6
Intro Pcomp: week 7 - lab
November 6, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Controlling a Motor
I belatedly completed this lab (midterms and the subsequent post-midterm coma kept me down a bit) and actually found it quite easy and straight-forward.
There’s not much to report except to say that I did it. I had a little trouble at first figuring out that I was not supposed to use a servo motor but was saved from a near servo-disaster by a kind on-looker. So anyhow, here are some pics of my motor experience:
And then creativity. Hmm. This could have interesting applications on a really simple level as a knitter’s sidekick. I knit (yeah, I know…I knit) and something that’s always driving me crazy is winding yarn and then pulling out enough at a time for a few stitches. If you don’t have enough slack in the yarn, it pulls at your stitches and makes your whole piece bunch and crumple in weird ways. A yarn motor could help make organized yarn spools and also easily let out yarn…like a fishing reel. I’ll post some pics of that when I finish it…
Oct
30
Android Jukebox
October 30, 2007 | Leave a Comment
OUTLINE:
Our team, Jason Krugman, Karen Kuslansky and myself, created a sound/light sculpture from found and everyday objects and resources. Aside from the electronics involved, the work was made from Saran Wrap, a discarded light fixture, and a string of Christmas lights.
OBSERVATIONS:
Our project did not develop from a series of observations of an action per se, but from our observations about the desired interaction from a specific found object.. Karen had the good luck to happen upon an old light fixture whose physical properties invited a number of possible interactions.
The base and dome are both made from some sort of hard acrylic/plastic. The dome lifts off the base and re-fits easily, and the base was already studded with holes, making the object an ideal enclosure.
Because of the inviting curvature of the dome, we all agreed that a very tactile interaction would be best suited to the project (stroking the hand across the surface or tapping a specific area). As the object evokes a sense of dated modernism, we wanted light and sound to be triggered by the interactions — a sort of space jukebox, if you will. Ideally, we wanted the project to have 3 states: on, off, and change.
EARLY PROTOTYPE:
We brainstormed for quite a while on how to indicate where the object should be touched without physically drawing on the dome surface. We decided that 3 superbright LEDs would be projected upon the interior of the dome to coordinate with the 3 states. For clarity, we wanted these colors to be modelled after streetlights because of the ingrained cultural color recognition of green for go, red for stop, and yellow for change.
After some consultation with a few resident researchers and instructors, we ordered 3 QProx QT113 sensors (view datasheet). As we waited for these to be delivered, our first step was to work through the Arduino code and create a circuit of switches that triggered 3 different LEDs. We achieved this by modifying the “Play Melody” code found on the Arduino site and incorporating 3 button switches into the circuit. We were also able to wire a series of 30 red LEDs to ring the base of the dome. These are coded to light up one after another when a flag variable is triggered.
FINAL PROTOTYPE:
The sensors eventually arrived about a week before our deadline, which was somewhat stressful. Optimizing the code for the touch sensors and fully understanding the sensitivity and capabilities of the sensors took the longest in this process.
After a great deal of trial and error, the Arduino code was worked out with the touch sensors. We learned that we couldn’t include a speaker on the same breadboard as the sensors as it would disrupt the action. We are still unsure as to whether this is because of uneven voltages or a change in capacitance or both or netiher. Because of this problem and since we were interested in playing a more robust jukebox “song” anyhow, we explored the option of playing an mp3 file through Processing. After a bit more tweaking, we were reading the serial data of the 2 sensors in Processing, and with the help of the Minim library, triggering an mp3 file Karen wrote to loop continuously and pause when the “stop” sensor was triggered. We ultimately gave up on incorporating the third “change” sensor simply for lack of time.
At this point we were able to put the whole project together. Squares of copper mesh were taped to the underside of dome and connected to the sensing pins via a single wire. For a final touch, we incorporated a Saran Wrap/Christmas light sculpture Jason had previously made into the project. With 2 relays, we routed the AC voltage through the Arduino and were able to have the string of lights illuminate during the “off” state. I’ve posted images below of the dome, the circuitry for the sensors, the copper mesh on the underside of the dome, and the LED ring and relay circuitry:
Here are images of the project as demoed in class:
Link to movie (QuickTime) here
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS:
The most satisfying aspect of this project was that the whole creation worked. What initially seemed very simple was ultimately quite dificult given our limited understanding of the subject matter. However, our good group dynamics and eeryone’s willingness to tackle the unknown allowed us to make it work.
Of course, the next step would be to wire everything to a single Arduino and replace the relays with a transistor. Our wire job is far from clean, but now that I more fully understand the basic principles, my next project will hopefully operate more efficiently.
Oct
10
Intro PComp: week 5
October 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Serial Stuff
This week’s lab is about getting more interaction between the arduino and the computer. So far, I’ve wired the breadboard:
I tried some of the code examples listed, including the one that prints the raw pot value, then the corresponding binary, decimal, hexadecimal, and octal value. Here’s a screenshot of some of the output (yes, thrilling):
The next step is running the Terminal program and getting that to work. When I first ran it with the code as specified in the lab, I only got back a bunch of question marks after typing in the Terminal shell. After changing BYTE to DEC, though, I got back a bunch of numbers. This took a while because for a bit, I thought I was doing something wrong until I swapped out DEC for BYTE.
The next step is taking a program into Processing and manipulating data with the analog sensors to move a little ball around on the program. After running the command to give Processing access to my serial port, everything is magic:
Now for the get creative part. Well, I tried a couple things — first I played with a pressure sensor. It came from the NYU Computer store and everything there comes without the data sheets. I thought it was a force sensor. It’s actually an air pressure sensor. I had to create a voltage divider circuit since it measures the values of one side of the sensor against the other. I played with the code and made it work, but the difference in values is much less than with a potentiometer, even after I attached a straw to the end of it to focus my breath. Check it out:
So now what? I haven’t really gotten creative, just played around with different sensors.
I would have photos here, but WordPress is being crazy, so I can’t upload anything at the moment…
Anyhow, I was going to wire up some legwarmers with flex sensors that would gauge the depth of a knee bend and move the ball on the screen accordingly, but I found that flex sensors had the same problem as the pressure sensor in lacking enough sensitivity for my purposes. So, in the end I used photosensors, which worked out a lot better. I would show you a picture, but…
Oct
3
Intro PComp: week 4 lab
October 3, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Making a Motor
This week’s lab was a fun exercise in analog output. First, we were asked to wire up the servo motors (that came in our kits) to potentiometers:
And here’s me manipulating the potentiometer:
The analog output of the servo nicely mirrors the action taken on the potentiometer, but I started thinking about other analog input possibilities close at hand, so I connected the photosensor that came in our kits. I had to adjust the equation to scale the values correctly, but that was just a change of a single line of code. The results were satisfying:
Possible applications abound depending on the sensors used. A funny, silly vision in my mind is the intelligent barstool that always flips toward you when you walk towards it. Depending on how you program it, you could flip around to automatically greet whomever was coming up behind you if you were seated. It would completely change how people pick each other up in bars.