Recently in interactive Category

i just wanna hold your hand  will be holding down the lobby/bar thanks to gaffta!

Here's a link to the ijwhyh instructables!

EDIT:  video from opening night!

"I just wanna hold your hand" is the participatory light show!

This is a proof of concept, demonstrating video control via capacitive touch sensors with electroluminescent feedback.  The MCU interacts with an ATMEL QT1111, while PWM controlling the high voltage EL panel through a fet and triac.  In turn it talks serial with our computer, serving out some blown-out HD video.

The atmel qt1111 can sense up to 11 inputs and is configurable for up to 10mm of sense gap.  Here we are transmitting through 6mm of tempered glass, and finally, have gotten a fast response time...which needs some background explanation:

We've used this set-up before for a previous install.  The propeller MCU speaks SPI with the qt1111, then prints the result over serial to the CPU.  This was simple and elegant, and it worked--though a bit laggy.  But at the time, we had little time to improve code.  So it was installed as is.  Flash forward to now:  another capacitive touch interactive.  This time, we can't have the lag.  All of the embedded software settings on the atmel IC were teaked, as were the noise reduction resistors and sense capacitors.  But still, we had a 1-2 second detection time.  We needed more like 100ms.  The "Print" function was dropped for a byte transmission on a whim, and low and behold, we have the speed.  The entire time, I thought it was the qt1111 that needed work, when really, the Print function on the MCU side was the time hog!  And well in hindsight, it hurts to make that nullifying realization-- for what good reason was I using print?    

Times like this, its nice to step-back and remember that it wasn't the only assigned project, but one of many.  Small details like this can have very large impacts, and if you aren't completely focused, or stretched to thin (ahem, i claim this option), than you'll feel the consequences. 

Incidentally, we'll be updating the embedded code to the previous install.  And though it's only really a "firmware update," it feels good to know that the problem has been solved.

31 ideas, 80 people, 48 hours to design, build and code a project--only 5 to make the festival.  It culminated in a 5 minute presentation/demonstration within Intersection for the Arts.  Fortunately, project "i just wanna hold your hand" made it into october 20th festival!

It was an eye-opening weekend of talent and new possibilities.  And, a lot of hand holding!  More to come in the future...

Here's the project presentation and description by Ellen Keith, Yael Braha, Mark Roth, Tosh Chiang and Jasdeep Garcha

The 8-bit atmel attiny13  has 6 i/o and a crystal-less speed of 20mhz.  We've paired it with a 2x1 audio switch and a 2 watt utility amplifier on a 50x50mm board.  Every i/o of every chip is accesible via the terminals.  You can strip the unit down and make it just an amplifier, or just a signal generator, or just an audio switch!  This capability also gives some nice redundancy and bypass abilities.  One of the two dip-switches operate dependent on the programming of the attiny.  The second one can be used to manually control the audio switching.  The output crossover capacitor is pretty hefty at 1000uf, providing some nice low end in the speakers, but can be easily swapped out.  There's also an isp header for atmels mkII in-system programmer.  Lastly, we have a 5v regulator and a 12v regulator, both of which can be accessed via terminal.  The unit will certainly work with just a 9 volt battery, but the audio output won't quite have punch!

Sometime ago I posted code and a schematic for the LTF Generator.  Well, here's the board for those interested!  Perhaps I'll upload a video, and attach a link for batchpcb should there be enough interest...As a recap, this unit takes data from two tls230r light to frequency converters, and uses an arduino to create simple syncopation, outputting on a standard headphone jack.

Although, if i get around to it, i may just pair it all down to the essentials: boot the arduino for an attiny, throw in a power amp, and reduce the size threefold.  I should do that right now. 

One evening a friend asked if i'd be attending a musical event.  I guffawed and said, "of course not!"  The next day, I checked the site and noticed that my name had been attached to the event as someone who would: operate a robot through the catalyst of kinect.  Well, I hadn't recalled "officially" signing up for this, but with a week to go, proceeded in a focused manner.

The first step was finding Ryan Challinor's synapse for OS X 10.6.  Synapse takes the kinect and provides UDP output/input.  This includes a cool monitor window, as well as skeleton tracking.  The only hard part part for me, was upgrading to OS X snow leopard, which I'd resisted due to the number of "wonky industrial" programs I have on my machine.  

After that, it was a short manner of using the udpsend/receive objects to port everything into MAX/msp.  With that done, the sky is the limit.  But for my purposes, I just ensured that I could track the skeleton based on hits, or by "constant tracking" (in which you must prompt for the kinect data every two seconds or so).  i'll attach the patch for those interested.

The robot itself is nothing fantastic.  Its a simple bot built off of an arduino pro 5V, sparkfun motor controller, and an 802.11b based xbee for data tx/rx, and a super cheap 2.4ghz wireless camera with audio.  It beeps too, and has had a few varieties of sensor interfaced :)

In short order, the Kinect outputs data to MAX/MSP, which then uses the serial object to access the CPU's xbee, which transmits data back and forth with the xbee modem on the rover.  The rover arduino interprets the commands, and then moves.  In this way, kinect gestures could be used to control the robot!  Also, you can see where you're going, via the rover's wireless camera.

Rather, I broke it by violating a simple rule:  ALWAYS USE A PROTECTIVE DIODE!  So with everything broken, the rover would not work for the evening.  Instead I augmented the patch so that gestures would play a midi piano; stepping right increased the scale, stepping left decreased the scale.  The nice bit was that the users got to see the skeleton version of themselves.  The sad thing, is that I found out how shotty the midi interface on my sampler is (as I tried to do this first and could only get sporadic results!)

The attached patch will take synapse data and make it more usable in the max/msp environment.  It's an earlier version, and is certainly ugly.  You'll need to program the col object with the lines of text posted after the patch. 

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