Inverse Plotter
After a day of hard work, the physical construction is almost done. The rest is finishing touches – add the table on top, the plexiglass window, secure the Y stage properly, etc. The code is nearly ready as well. Yay
pcomp/drawing machines final – inverse plotter
My pcomp/drawing machines combined final will be is the inverse plotter (details to come). For that, I needed to build an XY table. I spent the last week messing around with scavenged parts from printers/scanners/copiers/etc., trying to figure out the mess that is the mechanics of an XY table… Yet another case of HTIL (Harder Than It Looks).
I finally got some few basic parts together and built a ghetto X stage.
It actually worked pretty well, even though the bearings were very poorly done. I got some skate bearings but no nuts, bolts, or washers. Later Igal (who’s also working on an XY table) got some and made his own bearings, which worked great. I’ll be doing the same once I get the rest of my parts.
commlab stop motion
shooting stop motion is harder than it looks.
pcomp midterm – the water is the message
For our pcomp media controller midterm, Adib, Luis, and I decided to choose water as our medium. We went through several iterations of ideas for how to control the water, and finally ended up with a piston mechanism, using a servo to control a syringe.
After a few tests we figured out the proper way to mount these beasts and Luis produced 4 units. Here they are running together off of a TLC5940 LED driver chip, which could (evidently) be used to control servos as well.
Our final plan is to have 4 servos, 4 DC motors (for creating turbulence in the water) and 12 LEDs, all triggered by 4 Sharp infrared rangefinders.
all ideas are secondhand
Ideas don’t pop into our heads from nowhere. We’re always inspired by something. Who owns the rights to reality? If two people took two pictures of Obama from the exact same spot at the exact same moment, which one owns the rights to the picture? How about Obama?
Intellectual property is stupid. That is not to say that artists (and software companies, etc.) shouldn’t be compensated for their efforts, but the current model doesn’t make sense. Jonathan Lethem speaks truth.
understanding media
It could be argued that these activities are in some way the “content” of the electric light, since they could not exist without the electric light.
Mr. McLuhan and I obviously have different definitions of the word “content.” What I feel is lacking in his is the notion of someone trying to intentionally express a given message. If you define “content” as whatever can be interpreted from the use of the medium, then indeed there is no meaning to the message, as there is no place for (deliberate) communication of an underlying idea or theme – all is in the eye of the beholder
If you’d ask me, I’d say that the medium is A message, but definitely not the only message. Does the medium have an effect? Yes. Does it render the content irrelevant? I wouldn’t go that far.
The next chapter discusses “hot” versus “cold” media, that is hi-fi versus lo-fi media. Whereas the first one engages one sense (or more?) fully and has a detribalizing effect, the second one doesn’t carry as much information and is high on participation or completion by the audience. I found the distinction somewhat arbitrary – television is cold and film is hot? print is hot? I realize this is a continuum, but I’m still not entirely sure if it works. I’m still trying to see what value it brings to the table – let me know if you have an idea.
pcomp week #5: observation
I am waiting in line at KMart, trying to observe how people are using the credit/debit card terminal. Most of them are used to it, and do it pretty much automatically: Wait for the cashier to finish, slide card, enter their pin and approve, sign, do a cash back (or not).
The whole thing takes less than half a minute for the experienced ones, more than twice that time for newbies. The parts people seem to be having the most difficulty with are:
- Deciding which way to slide the card. Even though it is indicated on the device itself, few bother looking at the instructions, or people just fail to understand it. Maybe it’s time for doubled-sided magnetic stripe readers?
- Realizing that you have to use a stylus to manipulate the touch screen. I have no idea why it’s like that, maybe they don’t want people to touch it with their greasy fingers? Anyhow, people tend to sometimes forget about the stylus and try using their finger (like they do with the MetroCard machines). I suppose this has something to do with the device’s affordances. There is no indication of the stylus’s role – it’s inconspicuous, pretty much merging with the outline of the device itself. Perhaps matters have become worse since the advance of touch screens in the last years.
Overall, I’d say the interaction is pretty simple (especially once you know figure out the stylus part), but has the potential to be even simpler. Some new cards already implement a wireless (RFID?) system to avoid the card-swiping issues, and it works pretty well from the little experience I had. To be fair, it’s not very easy to indicate this action clearly to the user, and although I haven’t had the chance to observe people using this kind of system, I’m sure they are often perplexed as to how they should be using it. The second obvious fix would be to drop the stylus. I suppose the reason they used it is for the signature part, that is pretty redundant in my opinion and can be dropped altogether.
pcomp week #5-6: serial duplex
For this week’s (and next week’s lab), I used a potentiometer and an FSR to control the frequency and pan of sounds generated using the minim sound library in processing.
the ecstatic truth cannot be static
Group 8 (Aiwen, Marko, Ian, Okka, and I)’s response to Clifford Ross’s presentation in Red’s class, the performance part:
It was truly awesome.
comm-ics lab
Dear Mr. McCloud,
I really liked your book. Please don’t sue me.
Thanks,
Shahar
Understanding comics: the remix.
das kunstwerk im zeitalter seiner technischen reproduzierbarkeit
Reading Walter Benjamin’s mass this week, I felt I was missing something. I don’t know if it’s a lack of context, or some previous knowledge I didn’t have, but I just didn’t get it.
Why does art lose its aura when it’s replicated? Art is a kind of replica in the first place – a replica of reality! Just this week we had Clifford Ross speaking at Red’s class, and he was telling us how he was on a journey to capture the experience he had/to maximize the reality quotient/to make the viewer feel what he felt. I don’t see why this case is any different.
And this is not the only statement Benjamin makes that I have a problem with. The whole painter-magician/cameraman-surgeon analogy is beyond me – I don’t see how a camera dissects reality better than the painter who can bring what he feels into the surface much more easily. A cameraman can only work with what he sees through the lens, a painter is practically unlimited in that respect.
One part that I found interesting was how he gives credit to photography and film as art forms that enable you to get a different look at familiar scenes and everyday life, whether by using close-up or slow motion. I personally appreciate these photos or movies that expose those hidden subjects.
I’ll have to read it again (and again, and probably some background material too) to be able to comment more intelligently on this one. That is all.
fun with electricity
Last week I discovered the junk shelf. I found a CD player mechanism and apparently all you need to do to make it run is to hook it up to power and ground! Sounds trivial, but everyone (including me) were pretty surprised to find out it’s that simple. After reading up a little bit, I got the H-bridge working too and could control the motor’s linear movement pretty well.
Then I wanted to get the laser working, but couldn’t find its datasheet anywhere. My guess is that it’s just too old to be found online. I wanted to do something with it anyway, so I decided to tear the laser out and put a photoresistor in its place. Looks a little like this:
I pushed the photoresistor through the laser socket, and insulated the wires, then hot-glued it to keep it from wiggling. Here is what looks like from the back:
Then I wrote a little program to basically make the motor go away from darkness and towards light.
const int motor1Pin = 12; // H-bridge leg 1 (pin 2, 1A) const int motor2Pin = 13; // H-bridge leg 2 (pin 7, 2A) const int sensorPin = 5; int direction = 0; void setup() { // set all the other pins you're using as outputs: pinMode(motor1Pin, OUTPUT); pinMode(motor2Pin, OUTPUT); // set enablePin high so that motor can turn on: // digitalWrite(enablePin, HIGH); direction = random(1); Serial.begin(9600); } int lastSensorRead = 0; void loop() { int thisSensorRead = analogRead(sensorPin); Serial.println(thisSensorRead); if ((thisSensorRead-thisSensorRead%10) < (lastSensorRead-lastSensorRead%10)) { direction = !direction; Serial.println("direction change, go back"); } lastSensorRead = thisSensorRead; go(); delay(200); } void go() { digitalWrite(motor1Pin, direction ? LOW : HIGH); // set leg 1 of the H-bridge low digitalWrite(motor2Pin, direction ? HIGH : LOW); // set leg 2 of the H-bridge high }
And here’s what it looks like in action:
It’s definitely not accurate, but I think the noise gives it a more organic quality. It actually looks like it’s “afraid” of the dark, doesn’t it?
As for the LCD display that’s sitting there on the breadboard, that has nothing to do with this project. I found it on the junk shelf and was trying to make it work. I borrowed a TLC5940 but failed to make the library work. Thank god someone told me an hour later that in Arduino 0017 you have to place the libraries in a different folder! I also managed to desolder some 74HC595 shift registers off some board I found in the junk shelf. They came off pretty easily using the heat gun, though I haven’t tested to see if they still work…
pcomp week #3 – electronics lab
As promised, this week’s lab wasn’t very exciting, but I did finally understand how to use the multimeter as an kind of debugging tool. I know it’s an important tool, and in fact it already came in handy when Chika and I tried figuring out why her LEDs wouldn’t light up. After we checked the voltage across the LEDs, the resistors, and the voltage regulator, we understood something was wrong. In fact, something was very wrong – even when we changed the power supply the voltage was still way too low. Turns out the whole power supply to Chikka’s table was defective… it’s good to know these things happen.
Miscellaneous measurements and documentation from this week’s lab:
One LED: 1.88 + 2.98 (resistor) = ~5V
Two LEDs: 1.98 + 1.77 + 1.12 (resistor) = ~5V
Three LEDs: 1.69 + 1.73 + 1.55 + 0.01 (resistor) = ~5V
Current with three LEDs in series: 7.29mA
Voltage across pot + across resistor + across LED equals………. ~5V!
the machine stops
Watch out! Technology is dangerous! Look what happens when you rely on it – it diminishes the human spirit, bad things happen, and in the end everyone dies.
There are no ideas here. One hundred years after this short story was written, we seem to be doing okay. Are we becoming more and more dependent upon technology? Probably. Will we be helpless if it is taken away? I doubt it. Perhaps this story was groundbreaking for its time, but today the message looks to me just a tad, well, old.
Moreover, as sad as their existence seems to be, the characters don’t seem unhappy (except for Kuno). Our life are already so far removed from our “original” way of living – compare the life of the average person 500, 1000, 2000, 5000 years ago to the life we have today. Technology is here to stay. The human mind cannot help but constantly inventing, improving, building, and rebuilding. And we adjust to life, whatever form it takes.
In addition, I believe the stage when intelligent machines might pose a threat to us, manipulate us to the point of controlling our existence (a) isn’t going to come anytime soon, and (b) will most likely carry at least as much positive consequences as negative ones. This reminds me of Ray Kurzweil statement that “in the coming decades, humanity will likely create a powerful artificial intelligence,” and his Singularity Institute, whose mission is “to confront this urgent challenge, both the opportunity and the risk.” (http://singinst.org/aboutus/ourmission)
One other thing I found interesting in Forster’s depiction of this reality was the movement away from the physical and toward the mental. The world is one where physicality, closeness, intimacy, are no longer a part of life and are even rejected by “advanced men.” The people in Forster’s world are after ideas. Ideas are the only thing that matters. And – surprisingly – music. Music equals emotion, music equals dancing, dancing is physicality and emotion brings intimacy, closeness. How does music fit into the machine’s grand scheme?
So, as long as there’s music, there is hope. And I, for one, welcome our new mechanical overlords.
pcomp week #2: fantasy device
I actually had a hard time trying to think of my fantasy device. The difficulty stemmed from the fact that it had to have an interface, which meant it had to be complex enough to require one. Most of the devices I imagine don’t need an interface because they’re either one-purpose, one-button devices, or they’re just smart enough to know what I want…
Anyhow, I came up with two ideas. The first one is a biofeedback ring that monitors the state of your body, effectively providing the functionality of the dashboard in your car. It can measure, for example, your heart rate, blood pressure, sugar levels, stress hormone levels, etc… There’s no end to this, but you probably don’t need to know everything there is to know, unless you’re a doctor. When the ring detects a problem, it can notify you using the built-in LCD (or some futuristic equivalent), and also vibrate if it’s really important. You can “click” the ring to tell it to stop bothering you.
If you’d like to know more, you also have a projected dashboard interface. Put your hand on the table and hold down the ring button, and it’ll project a dashboard on the surface. The interface can be manipulated by touch, using your free hand.
My second fantasy device is the weather control cube. It had to be portable, easy to use, and precise. I thought of a cube you can hang from your keychain. Each of the six faces has a dial on it (why dials? just because I like them and they don’t stick out). The dials control various parameters, as you can see below. You can also just give it a shake and get randomly-chosen weather!
pcomp week #2
This week I tried my hand at an analog circuit, first with the potentiometer:
I then replaced it with a photosensor and added a simple dynamic calibration algorithm:
You can see it working on a different range here:
Here’s the code for the thing:
int sensorPin = 0; // Analog input pin that the photosensor is attached to
int led = 9; // PWM pin that the LED is on. n.b. PWM 0 is on digital pin 9
int timeToReset = 10000;
int minValue, maxValue;
int lastSeenMax, lastSeenMin;
void setup() {
// initialize serial communications at 9600 bps:
Serial.begin(9600);
minValue = maxValue = analogRead(sensorPin);
lastSeenMax = lastSeenMin = millis();
}
void loop() {
int sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin); // read the pot value
int now = millis();
if (sensorValue > maxValue || (now - lastSeenMax) > timeToReset) {
maxValue = sensorValue;
lastSeenMax = millis();
Serial.println("seen max");
}
if (sensorValue < minValue || (now - lastSeenMin) > timeToReset) {
minValue = sensorValue;
lastSeenMin = millis();
Serial.println("seen min");
}
int outValue = map(sensorValue, minValue, maxValue, 0, 255);
analogWrite(led, outValue);
delay(50); // wait 50 milliseconds before the next loop
}
You don’t see it in the videos, but I encountered a rather strange bug: after a certain (short) time, the thing would start going crazy, thinking every value is a new maximum value. At first I thought it was the milliseconds overflowing, but the manual says it should take a few weeks so that’s not that. I guess I’ll have to debug it some more in order to get to the bottom of it….
orality and literacy
So, I just finished reading the first four chapters of Ong’s Orality and Literacy. I guess I’ll have to give it time to sink in, but I think the main point he’s trying to make is that writing restructures thought, and he’s very convincing. Ong says writing encourages an analytical, left-hemisphere mode of thinking. That’s as a result of several reasons, including the separation of the knower from the known, the ability to make changes and go over what one is writing, and the need to pass the message without resorting to intonation, gestures, etc. like in spoken language (leading to more refined and distilled meaningfulness).
This is a mode of expression inherently different from rhetorical speech, and one that is more valued in Western culture, in my opinion. Personally, I regret not having been educated in the spirit of rhetoric, trained to think on my feet and to be able to articulate my opinion as I go. Even though today, with the rise of electronic telecommunications, the world has shifted more into textual means of communication, I believe a significant (and perhaps a more important) portion of human interactions is still oral-based and could benefit from such skills.
In addition, writing (and reading) are solitary, self-focused, and abstract activities which encourage a disconnection from the world – a world we all live in, whether we like it or not. Looking inward and analyzing the self isn’t necessarily a good thing. Ong states it is essential for “full human life” (p.82), but I must say I can’t see how that makes life any better. In fact, excessive self-focus can lead to and is associated with rumination, which is linked to depression (scientists say) – so what good is it anyway?
The kind of thinking exhibited by primary-oral persons – practical, situational, and goal-oriented is one that I find personally appealing. The confusion of modern life is partly the result of too much thinking. We live inside our minds, disconnected from the present moment, thinking we are in touch with ourselves, but in reality (no pun intended) most likely inventing our self as we go along. I always find it difficult to describe myself – could it be that it’s simply not a natural thing to do?
Maybe it would do us good to stop writing for a little bit and try talking to each other instead, try to look outside instead of inside. Or maybe this is just nostalgia speaking. One thing I appreciate about Ong’s writing is that he does not judge, and always tries to bring to light the positive as well as the negative, or more often just the relative differences.
Several other points I found interesting:
- Reading necessitates conversion to sound, aloud or in imagination – I don’t think this is necessarily true. The sound might be just an epiphenomena caused by the strong association between the visual and oral forms of the word. You might ask then, why don’t we observe the reverse phenomena. A possible explanation could be that vision is more outward-oriented and thus the outside input overcomes the internal visual association that is brought up by hearing a word.
- Study vs. apprenticeship – Before writing (or even printing), one could not learn anything on her own and had to have a master that will teach her. We have too little of that nowadays. Same goes for the wise old men… where have they gone??
- The whole argument about Homer’s formulas – yes or no – seems entirely pointless to me. If a mash-up artist can be considered a creative genius, how could Homer be any less of a genius?
- Sound is associated with life. Something that is dead makes no sound (but can be seen, smelled, touched, etc.). Never thought of that.
- If a speaker asks the audience to read a handout, as each reader enters his private world, the unity of the audience is shattered (p. 74) – what does that say about powerpoint? (powerpoint makes you stupid!)
- Real time has no divisions at all – a clock falsifies time. Reduced to space (clock, calendar), time seems more under control.
- The modern critique of the computer – ‘garbage in, garbage out’ – doesn’t that also apply to a lot of people?
- boustrophedon movement – left to right, then back with letters inverted in the direction of line = totally cool, and makes sense too. I always get the lines mixed up when my eyes jump from one line to the next.
sensor walk
Is a simple button also a sensor? Is my/your/your dog’s eye (or ear, skin, nose, for that matter) a sensor? I guess they are – they all respond to stimuli and do some kind of transduction. I have to say I expected to encounter more sophisticated sensors on my walk. Other than surveillance cameras, it seems like the UES is technologically blind and deaf, for the most part.
Payphones have sensors that can detect the shape, size and weight of coins. They also have a microphone that converts acoustic waves to electrical current.
Button(s) + microphone
This card lock can sense the magnetic stripe on the card
Sensor extravaganza! Buttons, cameras, and microphones
Digital weight scale: pressure sensors
pcomp week #1
Extreme Physical Computing! This is actually harder than it looks – especially if no one bothers to tell you what a wire stripper looks like.
(vimeo decided to turn the video upside down. It was right side up when I uploaded it, I swear!)
So after burning a whole day mostly on wires, I finally began messing with Arduino trying to make a combination lock. Being a programmer and all, you’d think that would be trivial: All you need to do (apart from connecting a few more switches) is to capture button presses, store them, and compare them to the secret combination.
Needless to say, I failed miserably, but hey – didn’t Red say that’s what we’re here for?
Insights and observations:
- Button press events, please? Tried getting debounce to work but couldn’t.
- Arduino’s IDE is, by far, one of the worst IDEs I’ve ever had the privilege of working with (I guess that’s the price you pay for cross-compatability). Eagerly waiting for someone to tell me there’s a better way to do this.
- Gotta find a better way to mount switches than leaving them hanging on the wires.
- It’s amazing how much satisfaction one can derive from one blinking light.