by: Roberto Andaya

I have always tried taking naps in between classes but they are not as comfortable as I would like. I always wish I had some sort of travel pillow system that did not take too much space. My NapJac idea does just that and more!

Augmented Reality Beyond Z drawing in your space.

Draw letters and language with sound enhancements, real time in the space around you.

To expand the idea of a fixed alphabet, make your own! Listen and see the sound of the shapes your drawing with a outward facing camera giving the illusion of letters floating in space around you.

‘Einstein, Gravity & 101 years’

Initial seeds’ and direction of Einstein, Gravity & 101 years (E.G.101.Y) grew from my search for an elemental physical action that creates an under appreciated or surprising response and sound.

Technologies involved include: Processing programing tools and direction were fundamental to accomplishing the practical digital applications creating audible and visual responses integrated into project E.G.101.Y.. IPhone software App Particle/Spark, was used to connect and utilize the Photon, Bluetooth enabled, circuit board hardware attached to a small breadboard and the adjustable gain micret’ (VCC: 2.4-5.5V) held up famously after countless direct and indirect little glass ball strikes.

Stage 2: velocity banana

An Apple MacBook Pro facilitated near infinite calculations and processes to help write this vital documentation; additionally it helped send said’ code and visual signals to a ceiling mounted video projector and receive signals from aforementioned Photon. Miscellaneous power tools were utilized for presented and prototype construction. Lastly, the grandmother of all technologies, 500,000-year-old fire.

Note: diagrams, photos, and sketches of progress are also integrated into video attached below. The MacBook pro with USB powered the Photon below to Micro input then connected to the Micret by wires with a ground, AO, and power out to ground, out, and VCC on the Micret.

Photon wired for micret’ connect

VCC: 2.4 – 5.5v Adjustable Gain micret’ connected to Photon (above)

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VIDEO:

‘Einstein, Gravity & 101 years’   (A process inclusive video presentation, click link)

Einstein, Gravity & 101 years 1a

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Link to a Github repo or gist containing your code:

http://github.com/eonpcs/Working-Best-Rockstar-Einstein-Gravity-101-years.git

Inspiration was drawn from a few people and ideas for this sound based project. Here is a shortlist of those thoughtful, inspired projects or people.

• John Whites paintings have given me pause since first experiencing them, especially the pieces in the grand staircase at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. I am not sure how I feel about the layers of humanity starting on the first floor as laborers then on up to the 3rd floor where people are drifting up to the sunlit future built on the toil of those before them. This project allowed space to explore these ideas.  Here is a link to the Museums Grand Staircase paintings page on this impressive 3 floor mural.

• Sarah Sze is a site specific artist I had the privilege and pleasure to assist during the Carnegie International Art competition and exhibition. She has shifted the idea of a art space, what is its place and what are the rules? Sarah has been changing what thousands used to think was art, breaking through bearers with both tradional constructs of the field and physical responses. Sarah Sze art materials are found anywhere she finds inspiration.

• Einsteins theory of general relativity is now confirmed. Gravitational waves were recently detected by us humans! Einsteins 101 year old theory has been tested for decades, the gravity ripple from two black holes created a proton width blip detected by a set of man made gravity wave receptors. Here is a great New York Times link to the ‘music of the cosmos’ .

• James Terrell’s Roden Crater ‘a gateway to observe light, time, and space.’ is a massive crater that has been changed into a land art installation. It ‘engages with the sun, moon, stars and planets.’ A light and large scale interactive art artist. He often relates directly with the sky, stars and light. Here is a link to J. Terrell’s official web site.

(Night photo of the Roden Crater site specific art installation by James Terrell)

– Photon, Micret’, Processing code, imagined to this projected multi layered and active visual response to sound.

Lessons learned include:

This slower moving inspirational Project 2 brought many insights. Computer code utilized for interactive visual ellipses moving with changing color applications, a thoughtful relevant application. Sound input visualization tool to bring unexpected response to surprising thud and bell ring finale’ for the presentation. Fortunately, the  healthy pause in our daily grind from Einstein, Gravity & 101 Years gave satisfying emotional results and response from those that experienced it.

The early stage prototype in glass box brought light to physical, sound, and visual access points to be reconsidered. Re-framing restrictions brought focused energy and clarity to resolving the physical, electrical, audio, light, and conceptual challenges.

Video link to glass box prototype:

PCStudio prj_ 2 glass box – HD 720p

Next stages: in this project could bring more audio cues and projected responses. Multiple physical reactions to unexpected thoughtful twists including analogies and referance to our time here in relation to the greater humbling hope for a universal understanding of how and where did we come from.

• Computer science and the potential of it is just now being realized. We are shifting from the fumbling ‘what is this’ and shuffling out through the mastering of craft stage toward the art of expression and infinite usefulness.

• How can we maximize our time with its most advantageous rewards?

Can our inspired incremental projects provide power filled distractions pivoting us toward the next great impactful invention?

Yes.

Thank you for reading this it was a privilege and pleasure to share it.

Have you ever cooked something that required multiple cups of water? What normally happens is you need to use the sink and guesstimate or bring a measuring tool to make measure one cup at a time. Well

Inspiration

At first I wanted to have this exist out in the world, preferably out over one of the rivers. But due to the scope of the project, the time we had and some technical issues, I scaled it down significantly. I decided on a light and silly output of a running animation. I wanted to get more familiar with Processing and figured this would be a good project to start doing that.

Technologies Used

I used a Particle Photon board to the initial signal processing from the piezo microphone that was on the instrument. Then I used Processing to control the animation with a Serial input.

Photos

Here are some photos of earlier prototypes for the propellers

I even tried to make my own propellers so I wouldn’t have to use spoons, but unfortunately I couldn’t get a good form from the vacuum former.

Here’s a sketch for the final animation. Hopefully I can redo the animation so that its more than a woman running.

Code

https://github.com/dcamposzamora/windmillanimation

The file name “Switching_animations.pde” is the first code I showed for critique that switched between 2 different animations. But the second “Slow_still_frames.pde” is the one in the video, where the animation moves depending on the input of the serial. So if the wind is hitting faster the images of the animation switch faster.

External Libraries

I used examples from the Processing reference libraries for this project.

Conclusion

I had a lot of difficulty with this project so the final product is far from what I envisioned. Since I was caught up with the conceptual roadblocks, I had less time to troubleshoot the technical difficulties that arose. But in the end I’m glad I got the microphone and animation working. Initially I thought of this as being just a kind of dumb, fun project to get to know some of software and hardware better but during the critique, the suggestion that something like this could be applied to children’s toys or books was really interesting to me. It makes me wonder what the possibilities of using interactive technologies could be to expand on children’s books (Goosebumps choose-your-own-adventures x100)  or cartoons and short animations.

The AlgoBot is a wheeled robot that draws an algorithmic pattern with dry erase markers. The prototype is based on the design of an industrial CNC machine. Using a gantry system for movement in the x-direction and custom cut wheels for movement in the y-direction, the robot is capable of drawing any generated pattern. The gantry system and wheels are both driven by NEMA 17 stepper motors and the algorithmic patterns were generated using Processing. The structure can easily be scaled up to act as a custom flatbed printer that can draw on any surface.

Objective: Make a wheeled robot that draws an algorithmic pattern.

Related Work

Exploratorium Drawbot

A flat bed suspended from its corners by wire so that it can smoothly swing, and a single arm that firmly presses a marker on a sheet of paper (drawing as the bed oscillates).

Three-Pendulum Rotary Harmonograph

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJYvc-ISrf8

A mechanical artifact that varies the frequency and phase of three pendulums to create different patterns.

Drawing Machine II

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG9e06IWAxE

A stepper motor driven machine that creates complex guilloche patterns.

Implementation

This prototype builds on a custom CNC machine that was designed last semester. The structure was made constructed laser-cut acrylic parts and threaded rods. The build uses three 12V Nema 17 motors for movement on the X and Y axis. For the Z axis, we used one 12V solenoid to lift and release a whiteboard marker. One modification we made to the CNC-style design is adding tank style treads as a replacement for the Y axis allowing the machine to move continuously in that axis.

The wheel assembly uses two idler wheels and belt pulleys to feed a belt around the main gear, driven by a stepper motor. The outside idler wheels balance the structure so that the belt is always in contact with the dry-erase table. Embedded in each of the two idler wheels there are bearings held in place with a screw. The screw slot can be adjusted to easily manipulated the tension on the wheel belt.

We came across many hurdles while designing the wheel assembly. At first, because the drive gear was too large, the torque ratio was disturbed and the wheels could not move forward.

Another issue we ran across was that the wheels had a tendency to skew inwards because they were only supported on one side. This caused the belt to catch and sometimes make the machine slide across the table. There was also a lot of friction between the pulleys and the side wall.

To generate algorithmic patterns, we used Processing to easily visualize the patterns. The pattern shown in the video generates a random sequence of points to draws in between, based on varying functions. Other experimental patterns were tested based on the fundamentals of harmonic motion. This code was then ported to javascript, so it could be generated by the server. When the wireless Photon board starts up it connects to an external server on the network. This server generates the GCode at each request based on the line that the controller is currently on.

EX

GET  http://192.168.1.100:7000/<current_line_number>

GET  http://192.168.1.100:7000/1

Returning

G0 X100 Y100

The photon then parses the packet which contains the motor control commands, and sends them over the TX/RX pins to an Arduino controlling the motors. Every time the Photon reads the “ok” from the motor controller, it passes the next command over serial then requests the next command. The reason we used both controllers was so we could delegate motor control to one board and wireless communication to the other. This structure allows the next line of motor controls to be primed before it’s required, which essentially makes the movements smooth.

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