The biggest challenge for me so far is to narrow down the options and ideas. The semester is too short to explore everything that interests me, so that makes it even harder to decide on a “final” project.
Proposal 1: The Sphere
I’m taking the visualizing the five senses class this semester and am always curious about extending the senses by means of physical computing. I couldn’t be happier if I’m able to combine these two courses to visualize the sight data and give it a more visually appealing presentation. That’s how I came up with the idea of “the sphere” (sounds like it goes well with my midterm cube).
The sphere is a toy ball mainly with a camera wrapped inside of elastic and transparent material (I don’t know what’s that yet). It should be able to be thrown between people and to bounce against walls and floors. It could also serve as a general purpose remote control.
The core of the sphere is composed of following:
- CMOS camera (which takes pictures!)
- microcontroller (controlling everything and serving the data to xbee)
- xbee module (talking wirelessly to another peer xbee connected to the computer)
- battery (power supply for everything)
- suspension system (maybe? foam?)
- accelerometer and other potential sensors that are required to fulfill the visualization
- wires … and stuff
The ideal size will be a little bigger than the tennis ball and smaller than a volleyball. It’s encouraged that people can play with the ball in pair or group. Due to the nature of the xbee communication and the fact that it does not have any external memory so it’s bounded to the computer, it’s not supposed to be a totally outdoor sport but I think apprently it’ll take much better pictures with the sunshines outdoor. Anyway the intention is to make the ball as durable as possible and involve as much people interaction as possible. So we’ll see.
The wrapping material should be:
- soft
- elastic?
- transparent (or having a channel for the camera to take pictures)
- using force/flex sensor to log enormous shape change
Basically I’m looking for something like rubber but transparent. Not sure if I can find one. If not I will also consider creating a woven structure by vines or bamboo. (pic.)
On the other side (the visualization):
- another xbee module is reading the data in real time to a processing sketch, or whatever client application that logs the data to the file system;
- ideally the data would be visualized in real time;
- the images taken are arranged in a collage in a virtual 3d space according to the position and orientation while it’s taken.
- data logged with different groups of people playing with the ball could be visualized separately and compared side by side
- other 2D visualizations are open options.
Since the sphere is designed for general purpose use, the post process could also be extended to music composing, gaming or any other applications that require multidemensional inputs.
Proposal 2: Physical Interface for a 16×16 (or less) pixel matrix
I don’t have a very nice name for this piece yet. Basically I’m inspired by a project called Shade Pixel. It looks definitely inspired by Rozin’s wooden mirror though. Similar project called SnOil is accomplished with oil and electromagnets. I would like to look for a right fabric to build this surface. Instead of the solenoids I wish to try the electromagnets to pull down the fabric surface, I really don’t appreciate that cone look of the holes. (link to yet another similar project.)
On the input side, I wish to make a website that allows the visitors to create whatever pattern within that 16×16 matrix in black and white. Whenever there is an update on the website, the physical interface morphs to the new pattern and so on. The inspiration is from one of my favorite simple site tiny.
The biggest challenge is, pretty much the same as previous one, to find out a right material, in this case, for the surface. This point is to break the boundary of the online space and make a change happened in the cyberspace directly impacts the real world. Of course if someone wishes to make it a one way instant message system I’m still more than happy to see that.
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