bruzed.com » Physical Computing

quikdrawl

bruzed — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 02:49:53 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Quikdrawl is a drawing interface which uses 2 hacked gun game controllers with red LED attached to the front of each. Clicking the trigger turned on the LED which was color tracked to find it’s location. Each time the trigger is pressed, a bullet hole through layered textures appears on the screen. The textures were preprepared but the intention is that these would be captured and created from a certain section of the users silhouette and layered in with previous textures. Nick, Steve and me worked on this application for our set pixel class. Made with OpenFrameworks.

fr3shb0t

bruzed — Sun, 17 May 2009 03:25:55 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

fr3shb0t was created as the final project for the physical computing class. It uses SpeakJet, TTS256 and PIC16F88 microprocessors and an ultrasonic rangefinder. If someone comes close to fr3shb0t, he gets excited and hits on them! He says “Hey, good looking!”

Jnx an augmented, tactile interface for stress relief

bruzed — Sun, 17 May 2009 03:20:35 +0000

Description

Jnx is an augmented, tactile interface for stress relief, in the form of a plush doll. The core idea of Jnx is based around the concept of squeezing something, much like stress busters, which is emulated by squeezing the dolls throat.

The look and feel of Jnx is inspired by sack puppets and voodoo dolls to add a mystical aura to the interaction. The interface emulates a voodoo doll like behavior by allowing the user to strangle it or twist it arms and legs. The doll responds to the users actions in the form of audio playback.

Technical Detail

An Arduino Duemilanove with an ATMega328 microcontroller is used to power the project. A zipper on the front provides easy access to switch the unit on/off, change a 9V battery and adjust the volume on the Adafruit Wave Shield, which is used to playback audio loops.

The audio loops are triggered when force is applied to the flex sensors in the arms and legs, and a force sensitive resistor in the neck.

Speakjet demo mode

bruzed — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:05:58 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

The first step of my talking robot project – test whether this Speakjet chip works! Strangely, I couldn’t find much help on rigging up the demo/ test mode for the chip so here it is. I used a AA battery pack to power the breadboard and an LM386N op amp to hookup an 8? speaker to get sound out of the chip. The chip circuit is the demo circuit on the Speakjet datasheet and op amp circuit is the gain=20 circuit from the op amp datasheet.

Testing the Wave Shield

bruzed — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:54:59 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Testing the audio Wave Shield from adafruit. It took a while to get it working because strangely the USB cables I got from Staples don’t work with it. Very weird. Anyway here’s the first test with the looped audio example.

Jnx prototypes v0.0

bruzed — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:31:57 +0000

Some initial prototypes for jnx the stress doll.

Look and feel

Materials:

Implementation

4 Flex sensors, a force sensor and an RGB LED. The LED changes color depending on how much pressure is applied to the force sensor or how much the flex sensors are bent – I still need to work this out in the code. Currently, the mp3′s are triggered from the computer using Processing but eventually they will be triggered from the SD card on the Wave Shield.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Scaling a circle with a potentiometer

bruzed — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:48:45 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Scaling a circle in processing with potentiometer through serial communication from a pic chip.

Toy autopsy

bruzed — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 03:39:51 +0000

Autopsy of a toy that does an annoying chicken dance.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Diver: Sequencer on acid!

bruzed — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:27:35 +0000

Description

An Arduino sound project, Diver is an instrument inspired by Analog Sequencers and Theremins. It allows creating a four-note looped melody which can be manipulated in real-time with knobs that can assign upto 5 octaves for each note. Each knob lights up to indicate it’s position in the loop.

The top of Diver houses a sensor which can be used to control the tempo of the loop in real-time. Use Diver in live performances or at home to produce awesome loops, melodies and special effects.

Theremin like instrument: Prototype 2

bruzed — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 06:04:22 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Second prototype for the theremin style instrument. It is more of a sequencer now with 4 POT’s for changing frequencies in a looped melody and a sensor changing the tempo.