May 10 & 11 5pm-9pm
Spring Show 2005
721 Broadway
at Waverly Place
4th Floor
South Elevators
New York, NY 10003
For additional
information email
itp.inquiries@nyu.edu
or call 212.998.1880
| Presence Frames | ||
|---|---|---|
| Author(s): | Matthew Sallin | |
| Instructor: | Igoe, Tom | |
| Class: | Networked Objects | |
| URL: | http://stage.itp.nyu.edu/~ms4045/movType/blog_netObj/ | |
| Keywords: | remote presence, networked objects | |
| Networked picture frames that indicate the presence of the person in the picture using motion detection. | ||
| The concept of the Presence Frame is to give a picture frame the ability to indicate the live presence of the person in the photo. This is achieved by establishing a networked connection between two picture frames equipped with motion detectors. Imagine you and I each have this presence frame – I have a picture of you and you have a picture of me. I might keep my frame on my desk at home, and you keep your frame on your bedside table. When I am in front of my picture frame, your picture of me lights up to indicate my presence (on the side where the photo is). Maybe you are around and you notice this light, or possibly not. Either way, your picture of me lights up, and gradually flickers down as it detects less activity. Equally, when you are at your bedside table, my picture of you lights up and I am made aware that you are infront of your photo. The frames can be “muted” against indicating our presence if we choose to, and only show the other person’s presence. Or the frame my simple be turned off so that it resembles an ordinary (but thick) picture frame. | ||
| Background: | As we go about our day, most of us continually cross paths with people we know, and we acknowledge their presence with a nod or a wave. When we meet people we are close to, we may verbalize our acknowledgement with a informal greeting. But when we are not in the same space as our friends and loved ones, casual contact is not going to occur and we can only actively initiate contact through a telephone call or an email. When the ICQ instant messaging client came out in 1996, it offered the means to initiate a real-time text chat by showing you who else was online at the same time. This was special, because it allowed you not only to see who else was running the client and thus in front of their computer as you were, but also their comings and goings, and certain explicit “states” of being such as the default “idle” or a more expressive message such as “bored at work”.
I find this feature both a useful and interesting way to be peripherally aware of my friends and relatives, but the interaction is dependant on being in front of your computer. We have picture frames at home that exist to remind us of our loved ones, but they are merely presentational. | |
| Audience: | Anyone who is far away from someone they care about. | |
| User Scenario: | Two networked picture frames will be at the far ends of a room. The user will walk infront of one frame, and see how the other frame lights up in reaction. If there are two visitors, both can see how they can indicate their presence to the other. | |
| Technical System Description: | A passive infared motion detector embedded in the picture frame detects motion, and sends signals to a PIC microchip, which relays the signals to an Xport webserver, which sends the signals through ethernet to a java chat server, where the signal is relayed back the same way to the other frame. When a frame receives a signal from the other one, it lights up a series of LEDs with varying intensity to indicate the volume of motion detected remotely. | |