Meet TweetChime, ITP Final Project

Posted: November 10th, 2009 | Author: Cindy | Filed under: ITP | Tags: Intro to Computational Media, Physical Computing, TweetChime | No Comments »

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.

Testing Servo Motor for Final Project Use from cindy wong on Vimeo.

Testing Prototype: TweetChime Web/ServoMotor Interaction from cindy wong on Vimeo.

Physical Construction of TweetChime from cindy wong on Vimeo.

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