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Rube Telephone

Chino Kim, Aaron Montoya-Moraga

A Rube Goldberg telephone that tangibly processes and translates conversation between two people, creating a fun audiovisual experience using various old and new communications technologies and producing unexpected outcomes.

Description

Using Morse code, language translation and optical character recognition, our contraption processes and manipulates conversation between two hacked rotary phones. Each step in the chain reaction is a tangible experience and occasionally distorts the message as it passes it along.

A one-way transmission may look like this:

Someone speaks into phone 1 > their sentence gets tapped out on a Morse key by a solenoid > the resulting Morse code gets translated back to English and then to Spanish > the Spanish string is spoken by the machine and then gets translated back to English > the resulting sentence gets printed out by a thermal printer, a camera takes a photo of the printed text and the text gets pulled out of the image using OCR. Both the camera view and the OCR output would be shown on a display > the resulting sentence is then spoken through the earpiece of phone 2.

To do:

– Reverse the signal flow when going from phone 2 to phone 1.

– Use audio thresholds to control the direction of transmission and properly route audio signals.

– Play hold music in phone earpieces while message is being processed.

– Improve OCR (crop photo, error handling).

– Implement autocorrect so that words mangled by Morse or OCR get converted to actual words before they’re passed off to the next step (Google search suggestions API).

– Code ringer behavior – if one phone is picked up, the other rings (we are already able to make the phones ring, we just need to program the Arduino to control them).

– Build/buy stands and mounts for each “station” (two phones, Morse, translation, OCR).

– Write an Arduino program that will control a light bulb progress bar (we already have the relays and wiring in place for this).

– Write a Morse code program that will convert the signals tapped out on the Morse key back to English (this isn’t a priority since we can fake it and use the English string from the previous step).

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Physical Computing

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Dandi

Anne Goodfriend, Marcelina A Nowak

Walk past this beautiful digital dandelion and watch it fly away with the “wind”.

http://annekgoodfriend.com/p-comp-midterm-dandi/

Description

Dandi is a screen based project featuring a digital dandelion that blows away, as if by the wind, in the direction of whomever has just walked in front of it. We were inspired by our childhood, when one of the biggest joy was blowing on a dandelion.

Our project is an interactive installation reminding us of a play, childhood and beauty.

The project is built using p5js and the Particle systems library. It uses Distance Measuring Sensors, the newPing Library, and the arduino, to determine the direction of any person walking in front of the sensor box.

The dandelion was made of small dandelion svg files, which were drawn in Adobe Illustrator. Then, looped in spiral shape, created our fancy dandelion shape. A simple particle system allowed to achieve a ‘blow effect’ and capture the inherent fluidity and energy of the whole project.

It is playful and fun to watch. People seem to really want know about it and engage with it. We love the nostalgia and the playfulness of it.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Sound Boxing

Yuan Gao, Yuchi Ma

Experience sonification and visualization when practicing boxing punches

https://vimeo.com/148029990

Description

Our main sensors are put into the boxing gloves, they include accelerometer and gyroscope. Then in the show, we give users this pair of boxing gloves and a Thai Pad to play with each other, basically asking them to punch like a professional boxer practicing. We will use the data sent out from boxing gloves (through bluetooth) to control the Spot Light, which is set up on top of the show area, and Sound Effect (speaker connected to laptop) around this area. Let user experience the spot light changing (colours, strobe) and sound beats changing according to the punching gestures they made.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Physical Computing

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True Love Tinder Robot

Nicole He

Literally put your love life in a robot's hands.

http://nicole.pizza/itp/tag/tinder-robot/

Description

The True Love Tinder Robot will find you love, guaranteed. With Tinder open, you put your phone down front of the robot hand. Then you place your own human hands on the sensors. As you are looking at each Tinder profile, the robot will read your true heart's desire through the sensors and decide whether or not you are a good match with that person based on how your body reacts. If it determines that you're attracted to that person, it will swipe right. If not, it will swipe left. Throughout the process, it will make commentary on your involuntary decisions.

In a time when it's very normal for couples to meet online, we trust algorithms on dating sites to find us potential partners. Simultaneously, we use consumer biometric devices to tell us what's going on with our bodies and what we should do to be healthy and happy. Maybe it's not a stretch to consider what happens when we combine these things.

This project explores the idea that the computer knows us better than we know ourselves, and therefore it has better authority on who we should date than we do. In a direct way, the True Love Tinder Robot makes the user confront what it feels like to let computers make intimate decisions for us.

The robot is built with an Arduino, servos, a text-to-speech module, LEDS, a couple sheets of metal acting as galvanic skin response sensor, a bunch of wires, a box, and a speaker. The code is available on Github. You can also find my in-progress documentation on my ITP blog.

This is my final project for my Intro to Computational Media and Intro to Physical Computing classes during fall of 2015 at NYU ITP. Special thanks to my teachers, Tom Igoe and Lauren McCarthy.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Physical Computing

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Homemade Robotic Hand

FY Zhu, Wangshu Sun

Designed an open-source robotic hand for the disables and also for fun, currently we use the MYO as the input control for gesture control, and will use LeapMotion for interaction usage

http://itpzhufy.com/2015/10/21/hands/

Description

One of the biggest distinction between human-beings to other creatures is that human have hands. Unfortunately, not everyone have two hands. Though 3-D printing is very popular in the current age, it is still not available for everyone to take usage of it. We designed a Low-cost Robotic Hand, with only piece-by-piece materials and standard parts, make it available for everyone to duplicate it only with cardboard, scissor and parts bought in Amazon. We also make a linkage between Myo and our Hands, in order to make the hand controllable by the residue muscles that the most disables have.

The hand works well currently, made with acrylic and a transmission between the computer and the Myo. The whole system has suffered a presentation time for the NYU prototype fund show on Dec 4th, and attracted lots of the attentions and good feedbacks.

The interaction-part currently is a half-slave logic, that is to say, the hand will do some gestures as the user do, but also, some unusual gesture will be another trigger for some pre-determined gesture, like the video shows, turn the palm out will trigger the victory-gesture and turn the palm in will trigger the rock&roll-gesture, that’s only designed for the disables since those unusual gestures actually have the most powerful muscle electricity signal.

For the winter show, I will duplicate another hand made actually with the materials like cardboard and foam, in order to show it’s potential of the duplicatable for everyone, and will make the current hand with another two freedoms of wrist and use the LeapMotion as the input part, in order to finish some simple interactions like Paper-Scissor-Stone and Give-Me-Five.

Classes

Designing for Digital Fabrication, Introduction to Physical Computing

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VRTRIP

Corbin Ordel

VRTRIP is the experience of self reflection, isolation, truth, and self actualization.

https://youtu.be/VBDwHX1hlGw

Description

ROAD TRIPPERS! Follow your heart friends! Get in the car! Do you have any gas or peanut money? Whatever, it doesn't matter. Holy shit, that- You're Tot's friend right? Good thing we saw you here, we were about to split for the beach. “honestly tho, do u kno this prsn?” Anyway– oh, well, we don't know when were coming back honestly – we're just hopped up freaked out hippies! It's righteous! I bought these pink slacks from a thrift store the other days, only cost me 10 buckaroos!. I think I saw you outside Drones Club last week, right? You were looking pretty cute. I think you're Blake's age right? Are you also in Cyberactive Media Studies at U of M? That's what someone told me… Anywys, it's weird that we like know each other and also because your Jayy's little bro's age, also. I guess thats what happens in a small scene. What are you working on these days, we talked last weekend, what you did that day and you said that you had a good day, that you woke up and wrote a bit, then you got lunch and then you described the lunch in lots of detail and that you got a really good coffee and that the lunch was really yummy. Honestly I was really happy to talk to you, you seem interesting forsure, “but I'm not sure if your my type, to be honest I have no idea who you are but you seem different than most of the people who hang out around here”. DO you know Amanda? oh god, yea she's way older and from Alberta, she talks so much shit about everyone. It's cool if you go back home during the summer, we all do.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing, Introduction to Computational Media

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Play Pixels

Jonathan James Gallagher, Soyeon Chung

A DIY 16×16 RGB LED Matrix with camera acting as a video mirror with 256 large silicone buttons on top for drawing pixel art.

http://www.soyeonchung.net/2015/11/03/pcomp-final-project-proposal/

Description

We built a 16 x 16 LED matrix using Sparkfun button pads. It is a large version of an arduino based monome. Each LED is RGB, driven by TLC5940 IC's and is capable of outputting a 16 x 16 downsampled version of a live camera feed. Each LED is also a button, we have used this feature to enable users to draw pixel art by pressing buttons to change their colour. The purpose of this project is to provide a novel interface that allows the user to perceive themselves in the context of the form that our device displays. Only large differences in colour or light are tracked resulting in a recognisable outline devoid of the finer detail that we are used to seeing and perhaps obsessing over when using a mirror. We display the basic form of a person, hopefully making people realise that image is primarily an issue of perception which varies from observer to observer.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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SurveillAnts

Gal Nissim, Leslie E Ruckman

This project is created to evoke curiosity about non-human life, and wonder in emergent intelligence and systemic patterns.

Description

This collaboration is inspired by a deep interest in the way people perceive non-human animals and questioning the similarities that can be drawn between humans and all living creatures. The main theme of our project is seeing the unseen. We aim to communicate this in three different ways. First, through the structure we have built, we allow a view into the unseen, underground tunnels of ants. Second, through computer vision tracking and projection mapping, we visualize the chemical pheromone trails ants leave behind as they explore their space in real time. Third, we record and collect the paths of the ants in order visualize movements over time. Through the data collected, viewers are invited to explore the movement of the ants over time, revealing colorful drawings and potentially, unseen patterns in the daily activities of ants.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing, Introduction to Computational Media

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A Flash in the Pan

Yiting Liu, Yue Hu

Grabbing the star and evoking magic effects.

Description

The basic idea of the project is to evoke lives by grabbing the falling stars and dragging them to the particular positions. The lives are in both virtual and physical world in several forms. To clarify, in virtual world, when gamers grab a star and put it on the tree, the flowers will blossomed. Another, when gamers drag the star to the stone in virtual world, the stone in physical world will be evoked as well.

Through this project, we would like to show that life is short, like the flash in the pan, the meteor shot across the sky. However, life is also infinite and powerful since it could be transformed into various forms and last forever.

In the project, leap motion was used to detect the hand positions and gestures. Moreover, we used Processing to code the virtual effects and Arduino to build the connection within the virtual and physical world.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Physical Computing

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Poetic Journey

Nai-Chen Yang, Yan Zhao

An interactive installation using Tang Dynasty poetry to bring viewers traveling through the spiritual life of Ancient China.

http://www.ync616.com/2015/12/06/physical-computing-final-project/

Description

The Tang Dynasty is recognized as the Golden Age of Chinese poetry. Wen Ting-Yun’s poem “Setting Out Early from Mount Ding” exemplifies the Tang tradition in its 3rd and 4th sentences, only constiting of six nouns: 雞聲(rooster-crowing),茅店(thatched inn),月(moon), 人跡(track), 板橋(plank bridge), and 霜(frost). Even through these few words, Wen Ting-Yun vividly evokes a traveler’s mood via excellent inverted sentences and elegant parallel construction.

Our physical computing project is an installation showing the beauty of this Tang poem in an interactive way. It includes a screen, a scrolling mechanism (made by an RFID reader) and six stamps (made by RFID tags) with words. If the viewer stamps the words in order on the paper from the scrolling mechanism, they can rebuild the spot of the poem on the screen and witness the spiritual life of the Tang Dynasty. In the end, the viewer can keep the poem they recreate and take it away as a souvenir.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing