varungpta – F15 60-223: Intro to Physical Computing

Final Project: Crash Helmet

varungpta — Thu, 17 Dec 2015 16:31:20 +0000

By Varun Gupta (varung1) and Craig Morey (cmorey)

The Crash Helmet is a bike helmet that marks out locations where people have been killed while cycling to the rest of the Pittsburgh community. The helmet currently uses the location of the recent death of cyclist Susan Hicks near Forbes and Bellefield.

The Crash Helmet uses a LightBlue Bean to activate a high-wattage LED that is powered by a lithium polymer battery. The LightBlue Bean connects to an iPhone over Bluetooth, and when the iPhone comes within 20 meters of a crash site, the LED on the helmet lights up.

A previous version of the project can be found here.

Below is a Fritzing Diagram of our electronics

A video of the project in action is below:

Vimeo / Varun Gupta – via Iframely

A photo of a person(Craig) wearing the helmet is also below

Wearable and Out-in-the-world: Crash Helmet

varungpta — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 02:14:08 +0000

By Varun Gupta (varung1) and Craig Morey (cmorey)

The Crash Helmet is a bike helmet that marks out locations where people have been killed while cycling in Pittsburgh to the biker wearing the helmet and to the rest of the community. The helmet currently uses the location of the recent death of cyclist Susan Hicks near Forbes and Bellefield.

The Crash Helmet uses a LightBlue Bean to power four red LEDs. The LightBlue Bean connects to an iPhone over Bluetooth, and when the iPhone comes within 20 meters of a crash site, the LEDs on the helmet go dark. Additionally, the LightBlue Bean is connected to a vibrational motor in the front of the helmet, to signal the crash locations to the biker.

Below is a closeup of the Light blue bean and LEDs and the Vibration motor on the inside of the helmet.

Below is the Crash helmet in action at the site of the crash.

YouTube / Varun Gupta – via Iframely

Below is a fritzing diagram of the circuit.

One in One Out: Waypoint 1.0

varungpta — Thu, 01 Oct 2015 02:51:07 +0000

Waypoint is a glove that connects your sense of direction with your sense of sound. It connects to your phone using bluetooth and based on a location that you input into an app using gps coordinates, will produce a nice drum beat that will help you point towards that location. When you get off track the music will become dissonant and start to give you a feeling of going in the wrong direction. This gives you a audio cue that you should be going a different way. The audio, when using headphones is perceived as coming from the direction you should be going. Additionally, there are some led’s on the glove that help give a more precise direction to go to.

It uses a light blue bean as its primary micro-controller and a compass sensor on the tip of the glove. Additionally, it can use any headphones and any iPhone because the app should work on any IOS device that has bluetooth.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/euh59b7gvr787ci/AADoStudvs1-IKrbVdyfDDDFa?dl=0&preview=VID_20150930_222400.mp4

One-in-one-out: Waypoint

varungpta — Wed, 23 Sep 2015 23:19:55 +0000

The waypoint is a navigational glove that can be used to point to a location. It currently points north but will eventually always point to a certain location. It’s not currently presented as a glove, but the compass will be at the base of the pointer finger and the lights will be on the finger itself. In the above video, more lights turn on as the compass points closer to north. Eventually, the location will be input-able and a GPS will be used to navigate to the location in addition to the compass. We wanted to do this as it is a statement about the communicative power of the hand and the interest we have in glove based wearables.

By Varun Gupta, Kevin Apolo, Yousuf Soliman

“Hapifork” by Hapi

varungpta — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 03:47:52 +0000

Hapifork is an electronic fork that keeps track of eating habits and vibrates when you are eating too fast. It keeps metrics such as how you long you spend eating and how many times you bring your fork to your mouth. It includes an online dashboard and mobile app to view the data that it collects.

YouTube / Joyus – via Iframely

‘Ping’ by Electricfoxy(2011)

varungpta — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 02:57:57 +0000

Ping by Electric-foxy is a “Social Networking Garment” that connects your clothing to Facebook.By performing various gestures, you can make happen various things on Facebook. From lifting up and putting down the hood to push a status to Facebook to getting a tap on your shoulder whenever anyone sends you a message, the garment is a total Facebook life integration. The project brings up questions on how perpetually connected people should be with social media?

‘Dash Button’ by Amazon(2015)

varungpta — Thu, 10 Sep 2015 02:42:15 +0000

The Amazon Dash Button is a Amazon ‘Internet of Things’ button for shopping that is a button that orders a product that you buy often. It is available for 4.99 but also gives a first time discount of 4.99 on the first order made with the button. When the product first came out, many people thought of it as a joke. The product brings up questions about the place of consumerism in the home.