I LOVE NEW YORK (final edition) from cindy wong on Vimeo.
I Love New York from cindy wong on Vimeo.
A short 40-second animation clip produced in After Effects. Artwork, design by Cindy Wong. Music by Art Tatum.
TweetChime Live Demo from cindy wong on Vimeo.
Helping people overcome long distances, TweetChime is a melodic chime that communicates people’s sentiments and transmits them into melody. So, no matter where you are, you can let your loved ones know you’re thinking of them and they can hear your sentiment in real-time in sound. By using Twitter, you can send your preferred sentiment, anytime and anywhere at your convenience.
In this case, in the video above, my brother, Pat has sent me this coded message: “@tweetchime [dinnertime] awww yeah!” Why? Because he has an odd sense of humor from living in Mobile, Al. which somehow is lost on me in New York City. Ah, family.
TweetChime is great for ambient contact technology. In other words, you can keep yourself open to others without them having to actively message you (through phone/IM/email). Vice versa, they can quickly tweet you and have the satisfaction of knowing that you will hear their tweet melody in real time on your side. The TweetChime is unobtrusive and (if prototyped further) can blend into your household.
Would you like to send a sentiment to me? Please tweet to @tweetchime, the TweetChime’s Twitter account.
How to Send: TweetChime recognizes the coded message within the brackets [ ]. The TweetChime website will scan Twitter’s search results looking for messages aimed at @tweetchime.
I have programmed a reply that TweetChime can recognize from a Twitter message. Choose your choice below:
ex: cwong08 says: “@tweetchime [dinner time] Mom is serving mashed potatoes and turkey! Mmmm!
TweetChime will be searching for all mentions of itself (@tweetchime) through Twitter’s public search time line. When it finds the coded tweet (1 of the 6 above), it’ll understand it and output into a short melody that the TweetChime owner will understand.
See It In Action
TweetChime in Progress! from cindy wong on Vimeo.
I managed to make it work! Here’s it in action: Five Servomotors using the servo library within Arduino to function within sequence with room for a delay so each servomotor can complete their action before proceeding to the next action.
New things I learned:
1) Servo library can be used on non-PWM slots on the Arduino. You are not limited by slots 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11.
2) Heat shields are a must-have on a voltage regulator where you plan to have your device on for anything above 5 minutes (IMHO)
Photo of my breadboard setup -
About a week left before finals are due. Here’s where I stand:
Construction: 90% done. I learned how to use a power drill, the wood shop, and cut saw for all this work! Amazing. Tom Igoe recommended a good way for me to mount my servo motors by using included metal screws with the servo motors to these wood planks. Now, I just need to staple chimes in place, mount a headboard to the front, and plant my arduino and breadboard to the back.
TweetChime Website: Interaction is in place. Can tweak more with JAVAscript, CSS to make it more pretty but the basic interaction is there. Updated the Twitter parsing so friends and family don’t have to use previously formatted message (ex: @tweetchime 65 #tweetchime). Now, they can send a brief message that cues the melodies like this: “@tweetchime [thinking of you]“. So far, I have coded messages such as thinking of you, holla, congratulations, and missing you.
Arduino Coding: Unfortanately, the servo library I was using can only handle up to 3 servomotors. After testing the 4th servo motor, the TweetChime started acting up with servo motors working erratically, out of order, and sometimes randomly without input from my website. Not good. So, I have to redo Arduino coding to use PULSE method (with MILLIS) and not use the servo library. 