SteamSHIFT

Cheap acoustic sensors make surfaces interactive

New Scientist has an article on turning any surface into a touch screen using small piezoelectric sensors to sense surface vibrations -

“A series of acoustic sensors that turn any surface into a touch-sensitive computer interface have been developed by European researchers.

Two or more sensors are attached around the edges of the surface. These pinpoint the position of a finger, or another touching object, by tracking minute vibrations. This allows them to create a virtual touchpad, or keyboard, on any table or wall.” [via] - Link.

(Via MAKE Magazine.)

Tiilt!

… I don’t own a Wii. But as of today I do own a Wii Remote (and a nunchuk). And I’ve had a lot of fun using the Wiimote.framework to hack up this app:

Tiilt.mp4

This screencast shows a simple Quartz Composer composition being manipulated by the Wii remote. If there is interest I’ll put the source online. …
toxicsoftware.com

I’ve been mucking around with connecting up a Basic Stamp 2 to MIDI, for building controllers, however I have to admit, that when it comes to analogue to digital conversion, I’m a little out of my depth with the electronics; I’ll persevere because I want to beat the problem, but that doesn’t stop me wanting alternatives.

(more…)

pixelcrypt: “The application I have created takes the pulse of your body, and uses it to generate music. “

It gets me to thinking, with regard to the Gojira visuals, it’d be pretty interesting to wire up the members of the group reading pulse and do some sort of visual representation of that data … who’s cool and calm, who gets riled etc.

Resources: Serial Communication in OSX Terminal: “I knew it had to be possible to view serial data in the OSX terminal window, but I’m not enough of a unix geek to figure it out. Finally, a little googling told me what I needed to know. Here’s how to read and send serial data from the terminal in OSX.”

Now this has some interesting possibilities; connecting basic stamp to the mac for input and output not via midi (controlled via shell scripts / applescripts) …

In consultation with DJ Chix, here is version 2, the difference being that the slip plate is gone and the slip mat is glue directly to the gear plate; apparently the only point of slippage when djing, is between the bottom of the slip mat and the drive plate.

All I need to do now is build one!

SteamSHIFT out.

It’s a shameless rip off of a vinyl record on a deck; but what you should get is all the various plates moving together at a set speed, unless friction is applied to the touch plate - then the slip mat should slip against the drive plate and the slip plate to allow the motor to keep rotating, despite the slowed speed of the touch plate. In addition, by using a large gear plate (could equally use a drive belt mechanism), and a small cog on the rotary encoder, you don’t need a hugely accurate encoder.

My thought is to make a smallish one of these, maybe 6″ diameter, for use as a movie speed controller in Quartz Composer, via midi. The speed read from the encoder directly influences the speed of the movie; it should also allow for winding it back and forth and so on.

Conceptually it is about providing the physical feedback that is so often lacking in digital interfaces.

SteamSHIFT out.

I would love to have a play with this stuff and see what I could do with it!

HMC MediaLab - Fantastic stuff - Fantastic stuff: “Hyperfabric is a new interface that lets you reach beyond the screen. It’s a very ‘touchable’ surface, made out of an elastic-like fabric called ‘Hyperfabric’. The screen warps like rubber, and can sense how hard your press it, where you press it, and you can even have lots of people using it at once. You really feel like you are going ‘through’ the screen.”

(Via Future Feeder.)

One Pixel Camera: “RGBy, by Shinya Matsuyama and Makoto Hirahara, is a cube-shaped lamp that senses color and glows with the sensed color. For example, when you find a nice color at a flower garden or a designer clothes store, you can use RGBy to capture the color to appreciate it. [video]

[RGBy. don’t miss the video]

It’s like a ‘one-pixel camera’ as Kuwakubo puts it. RGBy was recently featured in the recent Digital Stadium show, for which Kuwakubo served as a curator. In his comments, he suggested a possibility of a one-pixel video camera. Sounds very cool.

There is a switch and red, blue, and green LEDs on the bottom surface of the cube. When the switch is pressed, the LEDs emit light sequencially and the device detects the strength of reflected light to determine the color. If put on a multi-colored surface, it avarages the colors.

RGBy will be presented at DAF Tokyo soon.

“

(Via we make money not art.)

Pocket Electronics Info: “Pocket Electronic (abbreviation: ‘PE’ in the following) is an universal electronics DIY kit to built your own MIDI control box. Up to 16 controlling elements can be connected to PE transmitting 16 different MIDI messages on different (or even the same) MIDI channels.”

Another handy board for making MIDI controllers