Linyl is the project I developed during the second week of Physical Computing, together with Shruti Ramiah, Benoit Espinola and Natalia Echevarría. Linyl is a light player that allows to create an ambience by playing discs of color created from photos or images of past experiences.
The brief was to choose an electronic object and create a new way to interact with it, “A New Soul for an Old Machine”. Natalia found two beautiful artifacts in her backyard. I spent a few minutes just playing with the knobs and switches of the tape recorder. Smooth, feeling of robustness and amazing sound. Click, clack, precise. In every movement you can feel a bunch of mechanical stuff moving inside. A complete interactive experience.
Regarding the vinyl player, amazing external design and even more amazing engineering inside. After taking out an old condenser that would probably cause an short-circuit, we plugged the player in and… surprise! It was working. After pressing ‘Start’ the arm started moving gently to the plate. The rotation speed can be manually fine-tuned using the strobe tuner.
Nostalgia and admiration are mixed while looking at these old machines…
We decided to use the vinyl player for the project, changing the functionality but keeping the ritual and the slowness of the process of playing music. But instead of music, it plays light.
One of our premises (and a challenge too) was to keep the player working. We introduced the color sensor through the arm, and the Arduino inside the player.
We build a set of eight RGB led’s with the correspondent board to be embedded in the lamp.
We laser-cutted a disc out of acrylic, engraving grooves on it. On the other hand we generated the discs extracting the main colors of the pictures.
The toughest work was to calibrate the sensor, since it’s extremely sensible to ambient light. We added a white led pointing to the disc to help the sensor read through the acrylic. The distance to the surface to be sensed was also an issue, having notable changes on the values with small variations of height.
Linyl was exhibited in DKDS during the final presentations. Bill Verplank virtually attended the presentation, asking questions and giving feedback through Skype. Mary Huang made an ‘Arduino Cake’ to celebrate the end of this exciting week.
The last project I developed the first week of Physical Computing was Mimicry, together with Dean McNamee. It is a lamp that imitates the color that is captured by an ‘eye’.
Here the video of the prototype:
A color sensor reads the color of the object placed against it, and wirelessly transfers the data to the lamp, that gently shifts from its current color to the object’s one.
We developed a DIY sensor, really effective and fast enough for this project. A RGB led shines alternating red, blue and green light out of the eye. The reflected light for each channel is measured with a photoresistor. Once the three channels are known, the hue of the object is computed and transferred using XBee to the lamp.
We added some red led’s to the group of RGB led’s, since this channel was slightly weaker than the others. We also used a sandblasted acetate sheet to diffuse the light.
We used wood to build the eye’s housing, and foamboard for the Arduino’s box.
During the first week of Physical Computing I developed a tilt table game together with Dean McNamee. We used two Arduinos connec(as it was required for the exercise), using two potentiometers and two servos to tilt the table.
It’s always great to combine code and handicraft in a project, as we did in that one. Although the project was done in a few hours, we could take care of the details (as always!). We solved the joint with a steel ball and a nut.
The first two weeks in November at CIID we had the Physical Computing course, taught by Massimo Banzi, co-creator of Arduino and co-founder of Tinker.it. The goal of the course was to learn how to prototype interactive concepts. Arduino is a platform conceived for this purpose - approaches electronics to designers, reduces development time, adds flexibility to the design process and allows more frequent validations. It has become the tool for testing and showing functional prototypes to clients.
The first week we learnt how to use Arduino (both the hardware and the software), types of sensors and the basics of electronics.
Massimo explained also the importance of the community around the Arduino platform. The open-source attitude is key for spreading the knowledge and build over already explored areas. Massimo invited people with more experience to help others with less tinkering abilities, but learning from their fresh ideas, sometimes less conditioned by technical feasibility.
I had some previous experience with Arduino, but this course gave me the skills to quickly prototype ideas. The first week we developed three small projects, ranging from 2 hours to 1,5 days. We start learning by playing; we were asked to design a controller for a game made with Processing. I used push buttons for up&down control, and tilt sensors for left&right.
I developed another project with Li Bian, a flower that tends to orient toward the light. You can see a video here.
It was a pleasure to learn, and work side by side with Massimo. Is like having Steve Jobs explaining you how to use the iPhone or Ferran Adrià teaching how to make “pà amb tomàquet“.
Copenhagen was the first city to introduce a bike sharing system, in 1995. Since then, different cities have launched a bike sharing service as a healthy, environmentally respectful mean of transportation. Bicing (Barcelona) is a good example of success, having a high acceptation from locals and commuters - more than 400 stations and 6.000 bicycles in 2 years. However, the uni-directional flows and the lack of bike lanes in some districts are still challenging the system for a continuous improvement.
The city of Copenhagen, aware that its system was one step behind the modern ones, started an open design competition for the new Copenhagen bike sharing system. During our Upgrade Skills at CIID (Flash course), we were asked to design an interactive touch-point for the future system to be deployed in Copenhagen.
My concept aim to combine a simple and fast service for regular users and a guidance service for punctual users and specially, tourists. In my opinion, they should be a main target for for two reasons: 1. most of the people living in Copenhagen already have a bike, 2. discover the city riding a bike is part of the local culture and could lead to a better impression and experience.
The guidance service allows to select a route in the touch-point. The bicycles are equipped with a module with GPS and LED’s that guides the user to the selected points.
Following, a video of the concept rideCPH showing the service and the interaction in the touch-point.
The second week of Computational Design we were asked to develop a project using Processing, either an application or a poster. Dennis Paul from The Product joined us this week.
I developed an interactive installation that allows different users to play with wood pieces in a table, controlling elements projected on the floor.
The visuals are developed with Processing. It consists of a system of particles that is affected by three types of elements: a generator that shoots the particles at a certain frequency, while attractors and deflectors create the force fields that affect particles’ trajectories.
The three elements in the projection are controlled with blocks of three different types of wood. Each block has a fiducial underneath, so its position and angle is captured by a camera using ReacTIVision. The angle in the generator changes the direction of the particles flow, while the angle in the deflectors and attractors varies the power of the force field created by each pole.
The table has a glass surface which I sandblasted to disperse the light. As a finish for tangible part of the project, I laser-cut the name of the project both for the stencil and for the logo over the table.
The project was exhibited at the Final Exhibition of the Computational Design course. Seeing Simona’s daughter play with the installation was the best reward, and encouraged me to use ±pole as a platform to explore other interactive applications for children.
The first week of Computational Design at CIID we welcomed Patrick Kochlik, from The Product. On Monday, he presented a selection of works and gave us a short introduction to the history of Computational Design. Different fields have explored this discipline, such as graphic design, typography, fashion design, product design (check Fly Lamp) or architecture.
As a first exercise, we became instruction processors, executing the ‘code’ written by a colleague using blue and white tape.
Result of the code I wrote and Dean executed
The next days we used Processing as a tool to design interfaces and applications. OpenCV helped us to develop a bunch of small applications with face/eye/body recognition. One example is an application which allows to control the volume and pan of the music by moving your head forwards/backwards and left/right.
For the last couple of years I’ve been surprised about the power of Processing for designing interactive applications, visualise data, or simply… do art. I’m specially attracted by organic images created using Processing. 1, 2 and 3 examples from Eno Henze. Some of these pieces have a high similarity with some art created by elements of the nature. There are other artists that achieve similar results as computer-made artworks with a totally analog approach.
Glass is one of the most amazing materials, for its properties and beauty. At the same time, it is probably one of the less used materials while prototyping due to its difficulty to work with, and the lack of proper workshops.
With the aim to incorporate the glass as a material to be considered for prototyping (specially combined with light, an increasing passion), I’ve been around the glass workshop. Eric, a CIID student who is glass designer, taught me the basics of glass blowing, cutting and sandblasting. I cannot wait to have more time to practise, I couldn’t make a round ball so far…
Eric at work
Me rounding off the first glass piece
I’ve already used glass for a couple of projects, and hope I’ll do in the coming ones. It’s an amazing world to discover.
The second assignement for the Video Prototyping week was to design a service around ‘energy saving’ topic. After a short brainstorming, we worked in pairs to develop the concept and sketch it. Together with Eric, we designed a service for increasing people’s awareness about energy and culture of maintenance for a better efficiency and longevity of our appliances and devices. We decided to sketch the concept using a doll, shooting in the stop motion studio. This allowed us to control the light and the sound (no voice over), probably the main issues when shooting with basic equipment.
We sketched the story, built the scenario and the props…
…and we shot until late at night. It was fun!
Probably we missed a bit the focus of the service in the first version. We had another day and a half to refine the prototype and put more emphasis in explaining the concept. More footage, editing and fun.
I enjoyed this week a lot. Music, sound, photography, lighting, props, communication… video prototyping is design.
Video sketching is one of the most powerful tools for communicating a concept to the project team or a client. Vinay explained us different techniques and tips for shooting, editing and producing video prototypes. Resolution and fidelity need to be adjusted depending on the purpose of the prototype, the target audience, the timeline and the resources.
As a first exercise, we were given a small text with blanks in order to imagine a story. Working in pairs, we shot the story and then we exchanged the tape with another team, editing their material trying to imagine what was the story line. Here the resulting videos:
We used iMovie for editing - simple, intuitive and enough for the majority of the video prototypes.
