Category: ITP

I am still unsure on what the exact details of my final will be but I have found myself gravitating towards adult play.  There are a few parts to this.  The first is giving a lack of instructions.  I like the idea that an adult will use their curiousity to test out things when they aren’t given step by step directions.  Also, I like having an aspect that would make someone do something that would normally considered strange (for example, make a strange noise or move in an odd way.)  The final part is the physical touch of it.  I want to have something that feels good to touch so it makes people want to play with it.

With that being said, this is some of the ideas that I came up with:

One idea is the Music Grass.  This is an idea that was thought of with Paula Ceballos.  We discussed having some form of strings that when you touch them, they create a light and a certain note.  As this idea was discussed, we branched off into a couple other ideas.  One that I liked is a musical instrument made out of “grass.”  For this, it would use EL wire to create light when you touched it. Then using a mapping function we can have different types of sounds come out depending on where you touched it.  Theoretically, you would be able to play it as the user learns where to touch it to get a certain sound.  Another aspect of this idea is that it is scalable with the number of wires and placement.  The sensor to use is still not completely clear but I am toying with idea of capacitive touch.

Another idea is to take old fashioned toys and add a level of technology to them.  An example of this is making an etch-a-sketch that uses volume and frequency to control it.  I previously did this in ICM using just a digital etch-a-sketch but I could add in a motor to move a physical etch-a-sketch and have a microphone attached.

A final idea that is Sand Band.  Sand Band is essentially a sand box that would have sensors on the side and play music/sound based on the height and position of the user’s “sand castle.”  For this, I think the challenges would be figuring out the sensors and how to create a nice noise.  For the sensor, I am currently thinking I could use a proximity sensor to base it on the depth and have multiple ones around the box with different distances so where you “played” would have different notes.  In regards to the nice noise, I could either have a delay in the note or possibly just have a specific sound playing that would repeat.  An inspiration for this is Gilles Azzaro turned a 39-second snippet of President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address.   However, I don’t think this has a sensor that is actually reading the wave forms.

Update: Another Reference for Sand Band

For our Midterm, Lisa and I decided to adapt her Trump Pong project to work using physical parts.  We started by easily adapting potentiometers to each of the paddles (shown in the video below.)

Trump Pong with Potentiometer Test 1 from Lindsey Frances on Vimeo.

While it was easy to adapt at first, we found some troubles with the serial monitor.  At first, we tried to add in a handshake between arduino and p5.  While this helped with getting rid of the delay of the trump ball, we still ran into issues with not being able to play and receive data into p5 once the sketch was closed out.  After meeting with Sam, he was able to install a server fix that now consistently works.  Since the code works, we attached the components to the box Lisa made and now have our own personal trump arcade game with joystick:

Here is a link to our codes.

With redoing the Servo lab, I changed the code to make it turn 360 degrees.  However, it doesn’t seem to move a full 360.  Is this just due to the micro servo’s ability or is there something wrong?

Untitled from Lindsey Frances on Vimeo.

Here is a simple application (disclaimer: I do not approve of the use of real guns for this application.)

Servo Movement from Lindsey Frances on Vimeo.

In addition,  to this I was wondering where the Duplex Serial Lab is.  Serial Communication I think I understand to some extent but something is not clicking and I am not exactly sure what it is.

Every morning, I walk past a Citi Bike station without thinking much of it.  I have heard many opinions on it but haven’t really put much thought into it until now.

Citi Bikes are a bike sharing program that allows a person to check out a bike for an allotment of time then return it to any other station.  Depending on the location of these, they can be used commuting or just touring the city.  Overall, the bikes are used as an alternative form of transportation to subways and cars and to owning a personal bike.  

The interactivity of these comes in two forms: the station itself and the app. The station has a screen that you touch and follow the steps to pay and unlock your bike from the station.  Although the steps are laid out on the station, there seemed to be a variety of issues when the users were interacting with it.  One user commented that it was confusing; however, I couldn’t tell at what part they were at when doing it.  Also, the taking of the bikes and placing things in the “basket” seemed difficult for users and became the longest part of the process.      

While the station had the user interacting physically with the bike, the other technical interaction comes from the app.  I didn’t see anyone using the app at the time but I know from researching that it can be used to locate a station and find out the availability of bikes.  I think the app can also easily show how Citi Bikes is a system in itself. As a bike is taken from one location, it is returned in another.

I think the interactivity of Citi Bikes comes from showing that it is a moving system and each user is playing a part in the movement when they check out and in a bike in different locations.  Also, the station has the person interacting on a digital as well as physical level.   However, this technology may go against the ideas presented in Norman’s and Crawford’s work because it only uses hands for the interface and doesn’t listen and think in the way Crawford imagines.