Physical Computing on Regular Old Computers

We are working to stretch your idea of computing beyond the standard image of a computer like the one in front of you right now. Having said that, they are awfully useful. They can put out rich sound and video but that is a little beyond the scope of this site and chances are something that you already know how to do. More specific to physical computing are their abilities to take in sound and video.

Single Board Computers

Lower level chips costing a few bucks a pop are pretty hard to beat for small cheap "where-able" or embedded computers. As soon as you get into higher level prototyping using for instance Stamp modules at $50 each, you might consider looking into single board computers also none as embedded computers or industrial computers. These can give you all the functionality of ROC computers in a small size and price $100. They run unix or more expensively windows operating systems so you can leverage all the knowledge you have for programming those platforms. They typically don't have the i/o lines, particularly the analog i/o lines of a microcontroller so you may not be home free yet. For the moment you have to assemble all parts, for instance put on a harddrive and an operating system. If you have ever installed a card into your desktop computer you might be a candidate for master these otherwise wait awhile. You might check out [axis] or follow [Igoe's Blog]

Cell Phones

Now that cell phones have cameras and screens in addition to microphones and you can write programs for them you have to consider them the cheapest, smallest, most ubiquitous networked multimedia computer around. Most people I talk to gravitate away from the C++ solutions (Verizon)and towards the Java solutions (everyone else?). You can do WAP stuff on any phone that can make a data connection. The next level up seems to be Java J2ME and then a new Java standar MIDP 2.0. Some of the phones have serial ports but adding Bluetooth seems like it might be an interesting twist for communicating with wirelessly with the rest of your physical computing system. [Michael Sharon] put together a very nice page for getting started with this.

The Parallel Port

Before the basic stamp came along mid level hackers had to use the parallel port of regular old computers. There are a bunch of pins back there that you can set high and low or use to sense high and low inputs. This makes more than adequate for digital i/o though you might feel a little vulnerable with your expensive descktop computer connnected to your experimental circuitry. You have to find the address of the memory registers and get your software to "PEEK" and "POKE" at it. It is not hard and Basic used to be able to do it. A single board computer with a parallel port might be perfect if you have no analog i/o needs. [There are lots of people out there using it]

Video Tracking

The video camera is a fabulous sensor. Millions of bytes of information every second, all separated by color, scaled simply by zooming the lense. [VideoTracking]

Audio Input

Any ROC has a built in port for a microphone which gives you an nice analog signal.

Get Sound Level In In Director you cannot beat this [XTRA]
[Max] Max/MSP was born to analyse incoming audio. The new Jitter objects allow video analysis as well.

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