PComp Final PART 2 – Interior Weather

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I spent the last two weeks (mostly working on my Applications presentation) thinking about what my ICM/PComp final should be. Since the beginning I knew I wanted to :

  • build an immersive installation that makes the user to feel something that is shared live on social networks;
  • use Twitter as a “switch” to activate a physical interface;
  • use non technological material to build the installation;
  • use those non technological material to build a “visualization” of data sent by Twitter.

My final will be called Interior Weather and is an interactive installation that transforms emotions shared live on Twitter into weather. The tweets containing:

  • “I feel alone” will put the light of (darkness);
  • “I feel sad” will activate water mist (rain);
  • “I feel angry” will activate a thunder sound;
  • “I feel happy” will turn the light on;

Connecting Processing to a Twitter stream
Today, I managed to connect Processing to a live stream using the Twitter API. It “println ” the tweets stream.

  1. You first need to activate your developer account on Twitter;
  2. Then you can connect to the API using this example.
Here is the code:

// This is where you enter your Oauth info
static String OAuthConsumerKey = “put your key here”;
static String OAuthConsumerSecret = “put your secret here”;
// This is where you enter your Access Token info
static String AccessToken = “put your access token here”;
static String AccessTokenSecret = “put you token secret here”;

// if you enter keywords here it will filter, otherwise it will sample
String keywords[] = {“any keywords you want”
};

TwitterStream twitter = new TwitterStreamFactory().getInstance();

void setup() {
size(800, 600);

connectTwitter();
twitter.addListener(listener);
if (keywords.length==0) twitter.sample();
else twitter.filter(new FilterQuery().track(keywords));
}

void draw() {
background(0);
}

// Initial connection
void connectTwitter() {
twitter.setOAuthConsumer(OAuthConsumerKey, OAuthConsumerSecret);
AccessToken accessToken = loadAccessToken();
twitter.setOAuthAccessToken(accessToken);
}

// Loading up the access token
private static AccessToken loadAccessToken() {
return new AccessToken(AccessToken, AccessTokenSecret);
}

// This listens for new tweet
StatusListener listener = new StatusListener() {
public void onStatus(Status status) {

println(“@” + status.getUser().getScreenName() + ” – ” + status.getText());
}
}

The next step is to parse the incoming tweets into strings and have them send various outputs to the Arduino.
Sending data from Processing to an Arduino
Today I did the Arduino example Physical Pixel to send data from Processing to an Arduino.