What happens when you give 5 ITP students a camera to shoot in New York City? A complete mashup involving slasher horror, ninjas, film noir, and a giant Japanese TV mascot. Purely an exercise for our own enjoyment, I don’t expect Hollywood to come knocking anytime soon.
Equipment: with a Panasonic HD camera, edited in Final Cut Pro. Domo-kun costume made by Mindy Tchieu.
For my web development final, I knew I wanted to pursue my interests in social media, interactive design, and multimedia. I’m pretty interested in technology that helps bring people together over the web to communicate/interact. So, how can I make it fun?
FireChat is an interactive video website that serves as a hub for friends to deliver greeting card messages. Rather then have friends sign a paper card, why not have an electronic card where your friends can all personally deliver a video message to your intended recipient on 1 screen? Go to the website. Sign in. Create an e-card page. Upload your video message. Invite your friends and family to your e-card webpage so that they can upload their video messages too! When you’re ready, you can email your video-card recipient and they will get to see everyone’s well-wishes on 1 page in video! You know how some people hate having to sign cards? Sometimes, it’s easier to just say what you want outloud. Don’t worry, unlike handwritten notes, you can just re-record your message till you get it right.
For my Final Project, I decided to combine my ICMW and PComp classes together and produce a single idea: Meet TweetChime. TweetChime is an interactive music chime that that will take specially coded Twitter messages people send to you and transforms them into melody where you are. What makes that so special?
Whether a friend wants to express “Good Luck!”, “Congratulations!”, “Have a Great Day” or “Thinking Of You”, TweetChime transforms their greeting in a harmonious patterned musical chime melody in real time. Be pleasantly surprised when you hear the ringing of notes and know that someone – out there– is thinking of you. As an owner, you can decipher what people are messaging you based on the musical melody overheard.
Interaction: Person tweets a message through a special code setup. Example: @cwong08 says, “@tweetchime 65 #tweetchime.
Among the selected messages are examples like “Have a Good Day!” “Miss You,” “Good Luck!”, “I Love You,” that are given specific number codes etc. Currently, numbers 65-68 are coded. The owner of the TweetChime machine will log on to the TweetChime website and activate their device. From there, the TweetChime website scans an RSS feed for impending tweets for @tweetchime and refreshes your website with appropriate melody when triggered by friends and family’s tweets.
Under the Hood: TweetChime is powered by Javascript, PHP, and an Arduino. The TweetChime website is built with Javascript to interact serially with the Arduino (via USB port). TweetChime website uses AJAX to scoop data from a PHP script that reads a Twitter RSS feed and parses numerical codes from people’s submitted tweets. From there, it passes those byte values to the Arduino which then outputs it into the message’s cued melody.
Setup: Arduino, PHP, Javascript, 5 wind chime tubes, servo motors, 5 mini metal tubes (strikers)
Each wind chime is paired with a servo motor that is wired to the Arduino. When the Arduino checks for digital read messages, it will receive the values and trigger the servo motor to tap the chime in series. A message like “Have a Good Day!” would sound differently then a message like “Miss You.”
Here’s a video of me testing the sensor motors against the wind chimes I purchased to see if they’d resonate.
In a team of 5 people, create a 2-minute movie that is planned with a storyboard. Deciding we wanted a rich, narrative perspective sequence, my team divided the movie into 4 distinct chapters that delve into different movie genres. The movie, itself? Let’s say, it’s a tale of a serial killer and the hunt to find him…
This series of labs were a two-part process. First, we had to learn how to control a DC motor which uses a high current load. Then, we used H-bridges to control the spin direction of the DC motor.
So how do you control a high-current DC load such as a DC motor? Transistors, in this case the TP120 transistor which acts as an electrical switch between the Arduino and power to make the higher current load (in current, voltage)doesn’t overwhelm it. In this scenario, I used a potentiometer to control the spin intensity of the DC Motor. FYI, I learned that soldering a DC motor is easy since the order of the wires, power or ground, doesn’t matter! Check out the video above.
Update: Note that clickety, jerky motion of the DC motor above? Apparently, that is the result of the DC motor receiving too much power. Looks like that DC Motor is meant to run between 3-5V power. The Arduino is blinking (resetting itself) each time as an indicator for us (according to Igoe).
For the Physical Computing midterm, Rune Madsen, Benji Canning Pereira, and myself decided to focus on a whimsical, fun project. Using Arduino and Processing, Etch Yo Sketch is a digital twist on the nostalgic kid’s toy, Etch-a-Sketch. Rather then focusing solely on software, we wanted to mimic the tactile feel and imaginative play in an old-school format – so we constructed “Etch Yo Sketch” within an arcade-machine setup. Underneath the arcade machine is a Mac Book Pro reading the serial communication between our sensors and an Arduino which is displayed on screen.
Play Interaction:
Twirl the 360-degree Potentiometers to draw lines along the screen canvas. Twist the regular potentiometers to select your choice of color for the lines. Hit the reset button to restart from scratch. Hit the upload button to see your work saved and presented on our Etch Yo Sketch gallery. Watch the Making of Etch Yo Sketch, below.
