« Previous Entries

Category

Physical Computing

08.30.16

Silent Lights Installation Art, Physical Computing, public space, site specific | (0)
Silent Lights is an urban light installation located near the Navy Yard in Brooklyn. Role: Technical consultant, interior light box designer and fabricator, electrical engineering, Arduino dev, electronics installation & testing The Challenge For the residents of northern Fort Greene, Brooklyn, the intersection of Park Avenue and Navy Street is a bleak and noisy place that is best avoided. The Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) runs directly above the semi-industrial landscape, bringing with it the ever-present roar of the 160,000 cars that traverse it daily, and throwing the pavement beneath into permanent shadow. We wanted to make this desolate urban landscape more inviting for locals ...
08.30.16

C.O.R.A.L. Installation Art, Interactive, Physical Computing, site specific | (0)
Intro Role: Interactive and bunker design, material sourcing, 3D modelling, fabrication, electrical engineering, installation & testing Each year, Beam Camp puts out a call for artists and designers to pitch a three-week project for their campers to build on site during the summer. Along with my studio, Floating Point and artist Allen Riley, we pitched the idea of an underwater LED sculpture in the shape of coral reefs. Proposal Since Beam Camp has over 200 kids working daily on this project, the process had to be modular. Each reef would be made up of five branches of coral, and a branch would consist of ...
01.07.13

Magic Mountain Physical Computing | (0)
Role: Designed and fabricated custom mechanisms, arduino circuits, hacked micro servos for continuous rotation, 3d printed custom parts, wired lighting system (12v incandescent and multiple types of leds), built a rechargeable battery circuit as well as a/c power circuit, added sound playback and carved holes into antique base for speaker mounting and wire routing, IR sensor feedback based on two zones for two modes of escalation, circuit bent motor controller and designed game logic. Worked alongside model-maker and commissioning artist. Intro Magic Mountain is a kinetic diorama. The basic structure was in place when I joined the project, so I had the challenge of ...
12.19.08

Rotobooth at the Winter Show Physical Computing, Uncategorized | (0)
Promo Card Here's the link. Thanks for all of the positive feedback everyone. I'll write an update for the project in the next couple days, but finally there will be some sleep! Here's the photostream.
12.08.08

Photobooth Update pt.3 Physical Computing | (0)
Matt Parker helped me debug my code today. I orginally had a switch talking to arduino, and the arduino would take the picture. Since I had the switch being checked in the loop() function (the main function of arduino, in which it infinitely loops), it was looping a high value to the relay. This means that I was triggering the switch for maybe one quarter of a second, whereas using just the code would trigger for 1/1000th of a second (not actual time, just to explain). We both thought that something was wrong in the code and it would never fire ...
12.04.08

Photobooth Update pt.2 Physical Computing | (0)
I think the mic is broken on the Canon G7 I've been using. It's super low volume. Anywho, after frying 500mA relays on the external flash, I got the remote flash trigger working through a 5 volt 1 amp relay. I was working on soldering relays to old point and shoots. I ruined the first camera, a 5-megapixel HP when I accidentally shorted the flash capacitor another circuit (while trying to discharge the capacitor so I wouldn't get shocked anymore). The second camera, Tedb0t was nice enough to donate, wasn't proving to be much more fruitful. I soldered wires to the ...
12.04.08

Photobooth Updates pt.1 Physical Computing | (0)
[caption id="attachment_228" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="it's for you"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_226" align="alignnone" width="215" caption="Leads from the rotary dial"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_238" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="have you two met?"][/caption] The mic was set to low, but it's self-explanatory - the rotary is pulsing the LED x number of times (x = number dialed). Rotary Control from mike k on Vimeo.
11.20.08

Reclaiming Payphones Physical Computing | (0)
As I mentioned earlier, my PComp final will be addressing new uses for payphones. This is to make useful an antiquated service, as most people use their cell phone or VoIP on a wifi connection. How can we implement a new use for phonebooths that wouldn't interfere with its functionality but expand it? As entertaining as the urine deterrent may be, I'm afraid that it wouldn't be of much consequence. It might even perpetuate its use as a urinal, adding a celebrity status to a drunken piss. I had the idea to make a broadband photobooth. This would put all of ...
11.20.08

yoURe IN viEw sketches Physical Computing | (0)
[caption id="attachment_206" align="aligncenter" width="207" caption="caught red... err, yellow handed?"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_207" align="aligncenter" width="204" caption="(L) open circuit (R) closed circuit"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_208" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="say cheese!"][/caption]
11.14.08

New Direction for PComp Physical Computing, Uncategorized | (0)
Having abandoned my initial project, I was pretty worried about falling behind, I met with Kate to express my worries and work around my creative-block. The problem with the ideas I'd come up with was that they were either to simple/mundane/not interactive enough or they were too ambitious and unlikely to be finished by the end of the semester. She evaluated the weaknesses of each of these ideas to help me consider the ingredients of a good idea. Another piece I took away was to think of something that is already a part of my life, something I am already ...
11.10.08

Final Update Physical Computing, Uncategorized | (0)
I decided to ditch the magnet-fluid. Chris Cerrito and a couple other second years explained their pitfalls with ferrofluid last year. He said that most of the videos online were deceptively scaled, and that many of the results were results in millimeters. I'm sure blasting an EM with high voltage would surely make the fluid stand a decent height. After much research, I realize that the ferrofluid has been done time and time again, and fabrication would take up most, if not all, of the time alotted, but the assignment is for interactivity, not for simple controls. I had a similar idea ...
11.03.08

Ideas for PComp Final Physical Computing, Uncategorized | (0)
A year or two ago, I watched a video stream in which someone puts salt in a Ziploc bag and shakes the contents. The salt started spiralling and bonding with itself, I want to say even floating. I tried iodide salt, kosher salt, sea salt, with air, without, but to no avail. I sifted through email, youtube and all the avenues by which I might find it's link. Three hours later, no floating salt, but a few videos caught my attention. "Non-Newtonian" Fluid (it's friggin' cornstarch + water) and Ferrofluid. I want to create some sort of intuitive interaction between user ...
10.24.08

Transis-tore me a new one Physical Computing, Uncategorized | (0)
Seriously frustrating. I understand them, and yet, they didn't want to work. We wanted to use transistors to open & close our electromagnet circuits, but when we sent a HIGH value from our digital pinout, no current was flowing into our electromagnets. We then tried plugging in a simple LED where the lightbulb or EM would've been, with a resistor of course, but to no avail. We switched breadboards, transistors (3 or 4!), all leads, pwoer supplies, power adaptors. Kate mentioned testing the digital pinout by running it through an LED to ground. So that's first on our list when we ...
10.24.08

Magneto Physical Computing, Uncategorized | (0)
I'm still running on fumes, but I know that there's no getting up tomorrow morning. I don't have powerpoint installed on this new(er) laptop, but the presentation will be up in the next day or so. I spoke to Dan Shiffman today about further customizing his brightness mirror patch. We wanted to have a mouse & keypressed function to freezeframe, which ordinarily we would use a pause() command, but since the Capture class doesn't have said f(x), Dan suggested we save the frame as a PImage file that we can use to fake a pause. Once we can get the transistors working, ...
10.23.08

Electro-Magnate Physical Computing, Uncategorized | (0)
It's 8:08 AM... yes people, 808. and i did consume 8+8 caffeinated beverages over the course of the last 22 hours I've been P-Comping. I'm not great on documentation after I crash out, but here's some Arduino code. int incomingByte = 0; //servo variables int servoPin = 2; // Control pin for servo motor int minPulse = 500; // Minimum servo position int maxPulse = 2500; // Maximum servo position int pulse = 0; // Amount to pulse the servo int increment = 50; //there are 40 gear teeth of planar movement //the servo has 2000 explicit values //this means 1 tooth is our greatest resolution of ...
10.16.08

Pin Sculpture Prototype Physical Computing, Uncategorized | (0)
We've come a long way this week, but let me explain from where we were a few days ago. The idea was to create a way that a person can comfort another, in a way that audio and video don't achieve. Ideally, it would take a 3-dimensional impression of your hand (or whatever you put on it, the cat?), process the values that would then be sent to your chat buddy's computer, then rendered to their 3d surface. This means a soldier can understand the size of his newborn's foot and people can literally hold hands across the world. When Juri, Diana ...
10.09.08

PComp – Midterm Brainstorm Physical Computing, Uncategorized | (0)
I really responded to Juri's idea of a surface that would let a user interact with someone who is far away. As some of you know, my girlfriend is in Holland, and as great as video chatting may be, it lacks physicality - sometimes you just need an embrace, or more simply, a hand to hold. The 3d pin model I've had as a kid is still impressive visually, and I'd love to figure out how to read in a 3d shape, process it and update one of these pin sculptures to the specifications of the original shape. After asking around at ...
10.09.08

Serial Communication Physical Computing, Uncategorized | (0)
A great milestone has passed - Processing & Arduino are finally on speaking terms. What does this mean? One can finally have something they physically constructed control software, and therefor control a computer, or have an intricate piece of software control something physical. To graph the input voltage of a sensor, we change the type of serial communication from decimal to byte. While this renders the Arduino information useless, we get a much more useful graph in Processing. [caption id="attachment_105" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="this is your byte on drugs"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_106" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Real-time graphs are much better at understanding your sensor"][/caption] In this instance ...
10.09.08

Rattler-Bot Physical Computing, Uncategorized | (0)
My intention was to use a servo motor to rattle a snake tail necklace that I have. I envisioned a shoe-box marked "DANGER" that hid an ultra-sonic sensor, which upon detecting the close proximity of a curious ITP student, would rattle the tail. I couldn't find my snake necklace, so I fashioned a rattle from some plastic tubing, lamp chain & wood scraps (oops, Sara I still have your green screwdriver). This fabrication took abnormally long since the screw for the servo attachments does not like to thread tightly, and after a very long series of trials and errors, I just ...
09.26.08

Using the Multimeter Physical Computing | (0)
PComp - Lab 3 To further impress basic electrical principles, we setup LEDs in series and parallel configurations on our breadboards and took measurements to understand how components share voltage. Upon hooking up three LEDs in series, I found that they didn't light, so I assume the minimum voltage required was more than 1.6V. Another observation was that when they are in series, the 220K resistor isn't needed since the second LED serves its purpose. One other observation was that the power supply I used said 9V, but supplied 12.8V, so the importance of having a regulator in-line is apparent. Don't ...

« Previous Entries