First Prototype

Phew!... just in time :)

So this week was unexpectedly pretty busy. but a god busy, I still needed to finish some drawings for a course. But these drawings are drawings that take about 20 hours, so it demanded more from me than I expected. Hopefully I can show it next week :).

To finish up last week I tried our all of the things that are in the package that I got. So I experimented with the tilt sensor and also with the Servomotor. Finally I ended up hooking a light sensor to the servomotor to make it move to the amount of light that is registered. (quite similar to the LED that reacted to light.)

so here is a quick show:

The thing with this experiment was that the servomotor wasn't really easy to connect, since some connections slightly failed sometimes making it hard to find out if it really worked. But I figured it out and it ended up great :). A cool aspect of this set up was that when using the self timer of my camera (it was dark so I had to use a tripod and everything :)) it flashes a light on which the servomotor reacted on. So there was a cool interaction between my camera and the experiment. (To bad I don't have another camera which could have registered the whole thing :)). It was fun :) we all had great laughs :).

But today I decided I should do something with the small motor so I did a quick brainstorm to find out ways to use this motor, and then some ideas I could make into prototypes. The first one is "the Daygreeter" which is a small puppet that will greet the sun or day when it sees it :). The greeting will be some bowing movement that is generated by the motor.

The cool program aspect is the fact that I first want to let it calibrate the light sensor on a whole day, which means that I first need to find out how to do that. This is to find the values of the total dark to the time when the sun shines the fullest. And also to find out when the sun actually rises and goes down again. Another interesting aspect is that when something goes wrong and the Arduino resets it will lose it's values, so maybe there should be some kind of continuous calibration program that will make it work the whole time. We'll work that out :).

I already made a setup of the puppet and motor:

The interesting bit is that the motor slips on the cardboard wheel, which needs to be fastened better, maybe with an elastic band or something. I'll find it out :).

Any way, I need to go again :). hopefully it was an interesting post :) and see you next time!

Frank :)

Deadlines almost done, but no worries anymore :)

Phew..... The big Deadline is done, and with success (not completely expected) since the company was happy with it :).

On Wednesday we finished the deadline, and I really want to post some awesomeness, but I can't, not yet really...

But I can post something, first of all I finished almost all the tutorials! As I wanted to more the physical interaction stuff I didn't do the communications part yet, but that will come when it will be necessary :).

The last tutorial I did is the one where a LED glow brighter according to the amount of the light a light sensor sees. But the weird thing was that the LED is glows brighter as there is more light, But who needs light when there is already light? Makes no sense right? :) So I turned it around and this is the result:

with enough light.

without enough light.

The cool thing about this tutorial is that the program first takes 5 seconds to calibrate itself and set a highest and lowest value for the amount of light which can be very interesting in future projects :).

I also started a bit with experimenting, because I still had some DC motors lying around. This DC motor in particular is a 3V motor but apparently it can also take 5V output, so I hope it will survive future experiments.

ANYWAY... I attached it to the Arduino and also attached a potmeter to control it. And guess what?? it worked!!! :D

not rotating.

rotating.

Now what i want to do is create a system where the motor can turn both ways as this might be a bit more useful. But to do this I need to buy some tin and a soldering thing... you know... that kind of thing.... bleh...

Well that's it for now.... not really impressive but at least it is progress and that is what counts right?

see you next (or actually this, since this is a late post) week! :)

cheers!

take care,

frank

Deadlines deadlines deadlines deadlines deadlines.....

Hi there,

sorry... I didn’t really have time to do anything this week since there is a big deadline coming up with a project and I really needed all my time on it.

But hey, it was to be expected,,... and.. somethings did happen!

First of all I saw this documentary about Arduino which is really cool! :) watch it !!

Arduino The Documentary (2010) English HD from gnd on Vimeo.

The other thing that happened is that I now know what I want to do! yep that’s it now I finally have something to go for.

What I want to do is create more lively interactions. Let this be plant life, animal life or maybe a bit more jellyfish kind of interaction :) Whatever that means :).

uhm,... as an example there is this video:

TROBLION from stschwabe on Vimeo.

It is a ball that rolls itself into the thick wet mud until the mud is to thick, then it starts to shake the mud of and begins again. This is kind of what I would like to do... create something that can go on on itself (until it runs out of batteries :)).

But that is not all, or maybe: what I want to do is a bit different, here I sketched some initial thoughts... Not that good but I haven’t had a lot of time to think about it :).

They are more machines that react to a person in a lifelike fashion. Instead of just being a machine they will hopefully display some living emotions... no not emotions, the experience should be like that of an encounter with a life being. or something J not completely sure about it yet.

And... I don’t know yet what this would do, in a design kind of way. I mean, I don’t know why this would be necessary, but maybe it shouldn’t be necessary, it is just an exploration into an unknown world for me, so let’s see where we will end up :) Being explorers! yeah1 :)

Ok I guess that this is it for now, so Hopefully I can show something more interesting next week, maybe more drawings, and some more arduino things or stuff..

so ciao! :)

cheers

Holidays

Happy new year!!!!

New year, new opportunities, new ideas and new creations! :) I hope...

anyway, Last weekend I went to Goettingen to see some friends that I met in Lisbon during the awesome age of Erasmus absurdity. And I saw a video lately of a photographer that made a lot of pictures and put them in a movie. Which was awesome:

LA to Santa Cruz to Portland to Seattle and Back from Ian Flanigan on Vimeo.

So I decided that I wanted something similar, just to experiment. So I took my camera and went berserk! well, in the end I found out that I didn't go as berserk as I would wanted to go, but at least it resulted in a lot of pictures. so here is it:

Trip to Goettingen from FrankBorsboom on Vimeo.

Ok ok! I know... It is kind of crappy and stupid since the music cuts off and the images seem to stutter. But I think I just need to do this in a proper video editing software (AE? :) ) and not in Live Move Maker.

That said, expect an updat on this video as it still needs to get better (frame rate, music, all pictures in, all pictures in an angle that makes sense :) ).

See you next time!