flash is starting to appeal to me

finally.

i'm now getting to the stage where i'm thinking about how i want the interactions with the floor to look and behave.

whilst doing a bit of research i came across daniel shiffman's lovely motion triggered lighting which made me whimper a bit as it's so simple but so nice.

Which got me interested in particles. Which i have now decided is far too mathy for me, and trying to teach myself maths just to make pretty particles would be useful in some sense, but in this project ultimately a waste of time. Although i would like to create an "oooh" reaction, it is not the aim of this project.

So i've decided to be a dirty cheat and instead make some movie clips in dirty flash and use some dirty actionscript. I'm not even planning to code animations at this stage, i'm just going to animate them in a nice simple-ish way.

Now i've just got to learn dirty actionscript.

fio has a very long to do list...

after a couple of days of offending people through the lovely violet mirror, i am coming to the conclusion that i need to get it into processing for things to get really interesting. i'm not sure at this point of how to do it, but i'm hoping that after a little bit of research i'll be able to get my head round it.

i'm interested in using some of the applications that come in built with the mirror, such as sending tweets and counting how many times and object has been placed on the mirror, but i would like it to be intertwined with the apps that work the wiimote and arduino boards as well, i'm aware that i'm probably going to be making things hard for myself by squeezing as much different technologies into one piece but i'm up for a bit of fun.

i'm going to try to get some more RFID tags to play with too.. must.. tag.. everything..

i also need to either get or make some more toys... i want to use vibe boards to make things move around the place.

meet bert

not the rabbit, the thing under him.

my mirror is called bert. it is so unbelievably awesome.

here's the process of me programming it to tell phil that he smells of poopies.








so productive and effective. so much fun!!

failing...

at getting buttons to work...

int pins[] = {10, 11}; // led
int num_pins = 4;
int inPin[] = {6, 7}; // choose the input pin (for a pushbutton)
int val = 0; // variable for reading the pin status

void setup() {
int i;

for (i = 0; i < num_pins; i++)
pinMode(pins[i], OUTPUT); // declare LED as output
pinMode(inPin[i], INPUT); // declare pushbutton as input
}

void loop(){
int i;

val = digitalRead(inPin[i]); // read input value
if (val == HIGH) { // check if the input is HIGH (button released)
digitalWrite(pins[i], LOW); // turn LED OFF
} else {
digitalWrite(pins[i], HIGH); // turn LED ON
}
}

information overload?

in the future, we wont even have to think, we'll just be told everything!!



Can definitely see the uses as lots are demonstrated in the video, but i personally would hate the internet constantly following me, i already feel like i rarely think for myself, google answers most things for me. Handy, but i would make one that turns off when you want some peace and quiet and plays some relaxing music... or some mindless cartoon violence.

oooh...

all my shiny new toys came in one day!
Which is very nice.

I've got another Lilypad, with some buttons, vibe boards and some light and temperature sensors, to make some hybrid toys with. I'm not sure how effective the light and temperature sensors will be, but i want to play.

In another box of joy was the Violet mirror, which was packaged so very lovely.



It's so dinky! and you get BUNNIEZ!!

screw you bbc!

hmm...

yeah, bbc, that's very nice. YOU CAN'T WEAR IT THOUGH.

look at his smug face makes me want to punch him gajkng;uoavbjrklea...

i'm getting me one of these

This is the Mir:ror system by Violet, the company that makes the lovely Nabaztag bunny that i want so much it hurts. It's an RFID tagging system which allows you to tag your objects with RFID and program them to do whatever you want.





I'm looking forward to getting my grubby little fingers on it and having some fun with it!

ellie is misbehaving

I've been trying to get a similar thing to terry going on, instead using arduino. I'm trying to make her ears light up when a colour appears on screen. The colour recognition is working fine but i can seem to get it sending the right signal to the arduino. i think my brain is too mushy.

i have a vibrating tiger

YEAH.

he's a bit slow though. there seems to be a bit of a delay.

it works by the webcam looking out for something bright orange, and when it sees Terry's glorious orangeness, it sends a signal to the wiimote telling it to vibe. the wiimote is in a little pouch inside Terry.

Quotage.

wilkos is awesome.

felt puppets for 50p!! OMGZ.





Meet Ellie and Terry. Now i just need to think of ways to make them all fun and interactive for the presentation on fri. May include wiimotes and arduinos. these are just going to be little examples of how i may use objects.