fio does things

x x x

2009-09-23T22:57:00.002+01:00

This little notice is incase you were following me and are now wandering where I've disappeared to. I've now moved sites, I'm now blogging and posting my projects on my new website.

fiomakesthings

I'm leaving this blog up as a little homage to my time at lovely Leeds College of Art and Design, as I did actually collect a lot of information during my three years there, and it may be useful to me and others that somehow manage to stumble onto here.

Goodbye my lovely little blog.

wires

2009-06-05T13:30:00.004+01:00

Last night I made some wires just to show that 1) my idea does work, and 2) and secondly I want to stop people nicking my wooly things. I was origianally planning on the wooly things reacting the the RFID reader, but as they run on the same serial port channel there seems to be some interference going on. I'm not sure processing can read and write to serial ports simultaneously either. So I'm now using the wires to hook up the fun LEDs and stuff to a power source. The arduino program is a simple one that blinks the LEDs and makes the vibe boards pulse.

Here's me testing a wire I just made using my new arduino board.

Here's everything wired up.

here's

2009-06-05T13:22:00.002+01:00

A little quick video to show that my project works, and how it works. It's only a quick little video, I'll be making a more detailed one for my site later, as I want to feature bits of the exhibition.

Filmed and edited by Phil. He took over my computer.

working...

2009-06-05T01:03:00.000+01:00

lets look at the tech

2009-06-04T23:32:00.006+01:00

Because I find it all so interesting.

I've spent a lot of time in the project exploring different possible technologies to use, including hacking wiimotes, Arduino, RFID, and colour tracking. I explored all the different strengths and weaknesses of each tech: colour tracking being pap in low light, and interfered with by similarly coloured objects, wiimotes being temperamental little things and prone to errors in Processing in my experience, Arduino being one of the most appealing technologies I looked into, but all the fun components get a little bit expensive on my budget, and RFID only reading tags, not tracking. I'm now going to look into the uses of the two technologies that I have decided to use, and the potential uses of what I have created using them.

When I first started this project I was quite interested in tracking the users around the space, which still interests me, but as I progressed through the project I found myself becoming more interested in creating a tactile interface, and the technologies that were best to create one were what I ended up using - Arduino and RFID tagging. The RFID tagging allowed me to create physical objects that could be recognized by the computer, allowing the real world to interact with the data in the computer. The Lilypad allowed me to create objects that were not only clever and glowy and wow, but allowed me to create objects that the user wants to pick up and interact with. The knitting also helped with that, people seem to be comfortable with the objects and find them familiar because of the way they are made.

"In of itself, I don't find RFID that exciting. When it's connected to a greater network (e.g. a database, the web, other intelligent devices, etc.) , that's when it can get really interesting." - Doria Fan

Doria fan uses RFID tags to create objects that are imbued with personal histories, without overpowering the object with technology. Her RFID enabled medical history bracelets are still bracelets, the technology does not interfere with the practicality of the object.

The tags inside the medical bracelets contain activate a link to the patients online medical history, making it a beautiful but practical object, containing the wearers personal history.

iTea is another RFID tagging system which uses the internet to bring up data.

Dropping your conference pass in a tea cup scans the internet for data about you. Some information is taken off a social network site, some is googled, allowing the user to see their personal profile made by the internet, whether it's true or false.

To sum it up, the wonderful thing about RFID is that it enables an object to be two different things. It remains the object it was or was intended to be, the bracelet is still a bracelet, the big wooly cloud is still a big wooly cloud, but it allows the object to take on a different aspect as well. It becomes an object that can interface with the digital world, and can bring up data that not only relates to the object, but adds to its meaning.

I've looked into the uses of the Arduino lilypad before, so this bit will be a little bit shorter. Basically, after my experimentation and research in my last project, which focused on the lilypad being a technology to create wearable textiles, I found myself wanting to experiment with it more in a different context. I have researched in toy hacking as part of this project, looking into the creations from the mediamatic workshop, which while were brilliant examples of the toys getting new functionalities, the objects lost some of their identities as toys, what with the wires poking out of them. Granted they were prototypes from a workshop, but I wanted to create objects that were still objects. My little wooly friends were designed to be wired up, and buzzing around around the place and blinding people with ultra bright LEDs, but I wanted them to retain the element of familiarity and softness brought about by creating them by knitting, even before i knew I was going to knit them or reminded myself how to knit. By using the lilypad I was able to make them into "shiny wow wow's", but by using soft circuits was able to keep them as approachable objects.

So then, how could what I have made be used? My program, even there are around a thousand lines in it, is rather simplistic. It gets the feed, matches it up with the RFID tag and spits it out to the screen. And makes some swirly animations. All rather nice but the data it's getting, and the way it gets it could be used in other ways. Some examples are in the RFID examples above, using the technology to personalise objects and drag in data from the internet. The use of the weather data itself lends it to be used with a mapping system like google maps, returning the data to it's geographical context, and reminding people who don't have such a detailed map in there heads of where places are in relation to each other. The weather feed could also be used in conjunction with other feeds, perhaps used with flickr, to create a link between a weather state and the most recent and geographically appropriate geotagged photo uploaded, creating a visual representation of the weather that is more closely related to the data than my swirly graphics.

There are many things it could be used for i suppose, now that I've figured out how to do the simpler parts (getting the feed, getting it to the screen, using RFID tags), I plan to keep exploring the possibilities.

behold

2009-06-04T23:03:00.003+01:00

my immense, pretty much final, it works and it looks pretty and that's more than enough for me, code.

but before i bore you with the boring source code, here's some pretty pictures of it working.

Once an RFID enabled wooly (or not) symbol of weather is placed on the the reader, the code looks for weather matching the object, in several different cities. An animation is played representing the weather, and if matching weather is found, the city and state of weather is written to the screen, on top of the animation. If the weather doesn't match the RFID tag, a line stating that the weather isn't happening in that particular city is displayed.

For example, placing the symbol for partially cloudy weather on the reader triggers an animation representing that weather. If the weather is partially cloudy in Leeds, the program will show the phrase "It is partly cloudy in Leeds". If the weather in Leeds isn't cloudy, the program will show "It is not partly cloudy in Leeds".

I did experiment with code that tells you what the weather is like in the city if it doesn't match the symbol. So if it wasn't partly cloudy in Leeds, and was actually sunny, putting the partially cloudy symbol on the RFID reader would show the phrase "it's actually sunny in Leeds". Once I did this code I realised it defeated the whole point of having several different objects. Once one object is placed on the reader there is no incentive to place other objects on the reader, and find out what the weather is actually like in that city.

As you see in the examples above, it does return quite a lot of "it's not whatever in where-ever", but this is actually needed to show that the program is doing something, and that the weather you looked for isn't happening everywhere, or where you are looking.

It's not designed to be a simple way to find out what the weather is. For that there is the news or weather websites. This is simply a playful object designed to show and get people to interact with the data in a different way. To bring it to people in a tactile way that makes them hunt out what the weather is.

// having to run this in Processing 1.0 as the version i have been using
// for the rest of the project (0148) has issues with the delay tag

// Now working pretty much fully!!!
// Displays Animations and Text, and doesn't contradict itself.
// Slightly jittery, need to work on getting the delays right - long enough to read the text but not so long it slows down the animation.

// XML stuff
import simpleML.*;

// visual stuff
import processing.candy.*;
import processing.xml.*; // needed for svgs
float angle;
PFont font;

SVG blob1;
SVG blob2;
SVG blob3;
SVG blob4;
SVG blob5;
SVG bigrain;
SVG bigdrip;
SVG puff1;
SVG puff2;
SVG puff3;
SVG puff4;
SVG puff5;
SVG puff6;
SVG cloud;
SVG cloud2;
SVG sun1;
SVG sun2;
SVG sun3;
SVG sun4;
SVG sun5;
SVG sun6;
SVG sunny;

// Serial stuff
// import the serial library:
import processing.serial.*;

Serial myPort; // the serial port you're using
String tagID = ""; // the string for the tag ID

XMLRequest aberdeen;
XMLRequest aberystwyth;
XMLRequest birmingham;
XMLRequest bristol;
XMLRequest dundee;
XMLRequest leeds;
XMLRequest liverpool;
XMLRequest london;
XMLRequest manchester;
XMLRequest newcastle;
XMLRequest oxford;
XMLRequest reading;

int startTime; //create timer
int counter = 0;

String weather;
String city;
String temp;

String partlycloudy;

void setup() {
size(1500, 800);
frameRate(30);
smooth();

//Visual Stuff
blob1 = new SVG(this, "blob_001.svg");
blob2 = new SVG(this, "blob_002.svg");
blob3 = new SVG(this, "blob_003.svg");
blob4 = new SVG(this, "blob_004.svg");
blob5 = new SVG(this, "blob_005.svg");
bigrain = new SVG(this, "bigrain_003.svg");
bigdrip = new SVG(this, "heavy_002.svg");
puff1 = new SVG(this, "puff_001.svg");
puff2 = new SVG(this, "puff_002.svg");
puff3 = new SVG(this, "puff_003.svg");
puff4 = new SVG(this, "puff_004.svg");
puff5 = new SVG(this, "puff_005.svg");
puff6 = new SVG(this, "puff_006.svg");
cloud = new SVG(this, "bigcloud_003.svg");
cloud2 = new SVG(this, "partiallysun_003.svg");
sun1 = new SVG(this, "sun_001.svg");
sun2 = new SVG(this, "sun_002.svg");
sun3 = new SVG(this, "sun_003.svg");
sun4 = new SVG(this, "sun_004.svg");
sun5 = new SVG(this, "sun_005.svg");
sun6 = new SVG(this, "sun_006.svg");
sunny = new SVG(this, "bigsun_004.svg");
font = loadFont("ArnoPro-Regular-70.vlw");
textFont(font, 48);

// list all the serial ports:
println(Serial.list());

// based on the list of serial ports printed from the
// previous command, change the 0 to your port's number:
String portnum = Serial.list()[0];
// initialize the serial port:
myPort = new Serial(this, portnum, 9600);
// incoming string from reader will have 16 bytes:
myPort.buffer(16);

//create and start up request

aberdeen = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0001&u=c");
aberdeen.makeRequest();

aberystwyth = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0203&u=c");
aberystwyth.makeRequest();

birmingham = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0018&u=c");
birmingham.makeRequest();

bristol = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0025&u=c");
bristol.makeRequest();

dundee = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0045&u=c");
dundee.makeRequest();

leeds = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0078&u=c");
leeds.makeRequest();

liverpool = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0083&u=c");
liverpool.makeRequest();

london = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0085&u=c");
london.makeRequest();

manchester = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0092&u=c");
manchester.makeRequest();

newcastle = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0098&u=c");
newcastle.makeRequest();

oxford = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0106&u=c");
oxford.makeRequest();

reading = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0117&u=c");
reading.makeRequest();
startTime = millis();//more timer stuff

}

void serialEvent(Serial myPort) {
// get the serial input buffer in a string:
String inputString = myPort.readString();
// filter out the tag ID from the string:
tagID = parseString(inputString);
}

String parseString(String thisString) {
String tagString = ""; // string to put the tag ID into

// first character of the input:
char firstChar = thisString.charAt(0);
// last character of the input:
char lastChar = thisString.charAt(thisString.length() -1);

// if the first char is STX (0x02) and the last char
// is ETX (0x03), then put the next ten bytes
// into the tag string:

if ((firstChar == 0x02) && (lastChar == 0x03)) {
tagString = thisString.substring(1, 11);

}
return tagString;
}

void draw() {
background(159, 252, 255);

//every 5 seconds, make new request
int now = millis();

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
aberdeen.makeRequest();
println("1");

}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
aberystwyth.makeRequest();
println("2");

}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
birmingham.makeRequest();
println("3");

}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
bristol.makeRequest();
println("4");

}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
dundee.makeRequest();
println("5");

}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
leeds.makeRequest();
println("6");

}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
liverpool.makeRequest();
println("7");

}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
london.makeRequest();
println("8");

}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
manchester.makeRequest();
println("9");

}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
newcastle.makeRequest();
println("10");

}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
oxford.makeRequest();
println("11");

}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
reading.makeRequest();
println("12");

startTime = now;
}

if(tagID.equals("210076572B")) { // LIGHT RAIN --------------------------------------

pushMatrix();
translate(500, 400); // center animation

pushMatrix(); // rain 1 animation
for (int i=0; i<8; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0003; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob5.draw( 50, 50, 80, 80); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // rain 2 animation
for (int i=0; i<8; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0003; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob3.draw( 150, 150, 90, 90); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // rain 3 animation
for (int i=0; i<8; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0003; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob2.draw( 200, 200, 100, 100); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // rain 3 animation
for (int i=0; i<8; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0003; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob1.draw( 250, 250, 150, 150); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // rain 3 animation
for (int i=0; i<8; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0003; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob4.draw( 300, 300, 200, 200); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // rain 2 animation
for (int i=0; i<8; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0003; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob5.draw( 400, 400, 250, 250); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // rain 3 animation
for (int i=0; i<8; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0003; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob1.draw( 500, 500, 300, 300); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

bigrain.draw( -200, -200, 400, 400);

if (weather.equals("Light Rain") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's raining lightly in " + city, 150, 40);
delay(100);
}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain/Wind") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's raining lightly and a bit windy in " + city, 150, 40);
delay(100);
}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain Shower") == true) {
fill(0);
text("there's a light rain shower in " + city, 150, 40);
delay(100);
}

if (weather.equals("Showers in the Vicinity") == true) {
fill(0);
text("there's some rain showers near " + city, 150, 40);
delay(100);
}
if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining lightly in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}
if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy/Windy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining lightly in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Cloudy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining lightly in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Cloudy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining lightly in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Cloudy/Windy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining lightly in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Rain") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining lightly in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Rain/Wind") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining lightly in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Few Showers") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining lightly in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Sunny") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining lightly in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Fair") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining lightly in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Sunny") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining lightly in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}
popMatrix();

}

if(tagID.equals("2100764B24")) { // PARTLY CLOUDY --------------------------------------
pushMatrix();

translate(500, 400); // center animation

pushMatrix(); // puff 1 animation
for (int i=0; i<6; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
puff1.draw( 0, 0, 150, 150); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // puff 2 animation
for (int i=0; i<6; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
puff2.draw( 50, 50, 200, 200); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // puff 3 animation
for (int i=0; i<6; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
puff3.draw( 150, 150, 300, 300); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

cloud2.draw( -200, -200, 400, 400);

if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it is partly cloudy in " + city, 150, 40);
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy/Windy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it is partly cloudy and a bit windy in " + city, 150, 40);
delay(100);

}
if (weather.equals("Cloudy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not a bit cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Cloudy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not a bit cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Moslty Cloudy/windy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not a bit cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not a bit cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain/Wind") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not a bit cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain Shower") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not a bit cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Showers in the Vicinity") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not a bit cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Rain") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not a bit cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Rain/Wind") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not a bit cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Few Showers") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not a bit cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Sunny") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not a bit cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Fair") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not a bit cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Sunny") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not a bit cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}
popMatrix();

}

if(tagID.equals("2100766B22")) { // CLOUDY --------------------------------------
pushMatrix();

translate(500, 400); // center animation

pushMatrix(); // puff 1 animation
for (int i=0; i<6; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
puff1.draw( 0, 0, 150, 150); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // puff 2 animation
for (int i=0; i<6; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
puff2.draw( 50, 50, 200, 200); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // puff 3 animation
for (int i=0; i<6; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
puff3.draw( 150, 150, 300, 300); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

cloud.draw( -200, -200, 400, 400);

if (weather.equals("Cloudy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's cloudy in " + city, 150, 40);
delay(100);
}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Cloudy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's mostly cloudy in " + city, 150, 40);
delay(100);
}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Cloudy/Windy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's mostly cloudy and a bit windy in " + city, 150, 40);
delay(100);
}

if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy/Windy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain/Wind") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain Shower") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Showers in the Vicinity") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Rain") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}
if (weather.equals("Rain/Wind") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Few Showers") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Sunny") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Fair") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Sunny") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not cloudy in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}
popMatrix();

}

if(tagID.equals("21007643E3")) { // HEAVY RAIN --------------------------------------
pushMatrix();

translate(500, 400); // center animation

pushMatrix(); // rain 1 animation
for (int i=0; i<=8; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob1.draw( 50, 50, 80, 80); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // rain 2 animation
for (int i=0; i<8; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob5.draw( 100, 100, 90, 90); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // rain 3 animation
for (int i=0; i<8; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob3.draw( 150, 150, 100, 100); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // rain 3 animation
for (int i=0; i<8; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob4.draw( 200, 200, 150, 150); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // rain 3 animation
for (int i=0; i<8; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob2.draw( 250, 250, 200, 200); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // rain 2 animation
for (int i=0; i<8; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob5.draw( 350, 350, 250, 250); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

bigdrip.draw( -200, -200, 400, 400);

if (weather.equals("Rain") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's raining in " + city, 40, 40);
delay(100);
}

if (weather.equals("Rain/Wind") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's raining and a bit windy in " + city, 150, 40);
delay(100);
}

if (weather.equals("Few Showers") == true) {
fill(0);
text("there's some rain showers in " + city, 150, 40);
delay(100);
}

if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy/Windy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Cloudy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Cloudy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Cloudy/Windy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain/Wind") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain Shower") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}
if (weather.equals("Showers in the Vicinity") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Sunny") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Fair") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Sunny") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not raining in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}
popMatrix();
}

if(tagID.equals("21007683C0")) { // SUNNY --------------------------------------
pushMatrix();
translate(500, 400); // center animation

pushMatrix(); // puff 1 animation
for (int i=0; i<10; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
sun1.draw( 50, 50, 50, 50); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // puff 2 animation
for (int i=0; i<10; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
sun2.draw( 100, 100, 100, 100); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // puff 3 animation
for (int i=0; i<12; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
sun3.draw( 200, 200, 150, 150); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix(); // puff 3 animation
for (int i=0; i<12; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
sun3.draw( 250, 250, 300, 300); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

sunny.draw( -200, -200, 400, 400);

if (weather.equals("Sunny") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's sunny in " + city, 150, 40);
delay(100);
}

if (weather.equals("Fair") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's fair in " + city, 150, 40);
delay(100);
}

if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not sunny in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy/Windy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not sunny in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Cloudy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not sunny in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Cloudy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not sunny in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}
if (weather.equals("Mostly Cloudy/Windy") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not sunny in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not sunny in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain/Wind") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not sunny in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain Shower") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not sunny in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Showers in the Vicinity") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not sunny in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Rain") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not sunny in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Rain/Wind") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not sunny in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

if (weather.equals("Few Showers") == true) {
fill(0);
text("it's not sunny in "+ city, 150, 40 );
delay(100);

}

popMatrix();

}

}

//when request is complete
void netEvent(XMLRequest ml) {

city = ml.getElementAttributeText("yweather:location", "city");

temp = ml.getElementAttributeText("yweather:condition", "temp");

weather = ml.getElementAttributeText("yweather:condition","text");

}

animation

2009-06-02T22:53:00.002+01:00

Here's a sneaky peek at my animations:

Clouds are surrounded by cotton wool.

Heavy rain is not very impressed by his amazingly colourful background.

code:

// final heavy rain animation

import processing.candy.*;
import processing.xml.*;
float angle;

SVG blob1;
SVG blob2;
SVG blob3;
SVG blob4;
SVG blob5;
SVG bigdrip;

void setup()
{
size(1500, 800);
frameRate(30);
smooth();

blob1 = new SVG(this, "blob_001.svg");
blob2 = new SVG(this, "blob_002.svg");
blob3 = new SVG(this, "blob_003.svg");
blob4 = new SVG(this, "blob_004.svg");
blob5 = new SVG(this, "blob_005.svg");
bigdrip = new SVG(this, "heavy_002.svg");
}

void draw()
{
background(206, 237, 255);
translate(500, 400); // center animation

pushMatrix();
for (int i=0; i<10; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob1.draw( 50, 50, 80, 80); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix();
for (int i=0; i<10; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob5.draw( 100, 100, 90, 90); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix();
for (int i=0; i<10; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob3.draw( 150, 150, 100, 100); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix();
for (int i=0; i<10; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob4.draw( 200, 200, 150, 150); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix();
for (int i=0; i<10; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob2.draw( 250, 250, 200, 200); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

pushMatrix();
for (int i=0; i<10; i++) //variable controls how many appear
{
angle += 0.0005; // sets speed
rotate(angle); // rotate it
translate(0, 0); // where it is
blob5.draw( 350, 350, 250, 250); // placement and size
}
popMatrix();

bigdrip.draw( -200, -200, 400, 400);

}

testing everything

2009-06-02T22:37:00.002+01:00

I decided to try to use my new shiny Duemilanove to test my little wooly bits, and the not so wooly ones. Turned out to be a lot easier than using the lilypad to test them. Instead of having to spend ages sewing up circuits just to rip them back out. I simply plugged one end into the 5v and one into the ground.

This is the only thing that's faulty beyond squishing it into working! The vibe board in the cloud works, but the little sun doesn't light up. This is a bit annoying as I tested it quite extensively while making it.

Here's another cloud with a vibe board in it, this one works fine, although you can't see it in the photo.

Here's my sun..

and my raindrops...

Now I need to fix my sunny cloud, and hook them up to the lilypad.

more making things - sun and raindrops

2009-06-01T20:46:00.002+01:00

Whilst melting and being banished from using the internet as E3 was on, I was sewing. Sewing so much my fingers want to bleed. And melting. Mostly melting.

Here is my mister sun all ready to be sewn up with a little connecter attached, ready to be connected up to the lilypad.

And here are my raindrops, I decided to put some LEDs into them, to create some kind of feedback.

Here's the circuit inside them...

And here they are all sewn up and with eyes and everything.

That's all of my little components done, now I just need to finish the code, animation and connect it all up.

more making things - clouds

2009-05-31T16:34:00.004+01:00

My hands are going to be wrecked by the end of this week. This weekend I have been putting the final touches to my clouds, amongst other things, which I will blog about later.

After putting the knitting together to at least partially look like a cloud, I got the vibe boards ready to sew into the clouds. I've been using scraps of material to hold each of the components, so it can be put together like a puzzle, which is nice and easy.

I've placed the vibe boards on the back of the clouds, so while the user is holding it they can feel the vibe better. Here's me placing it...

And it sewn in...

I then worked on the little sun for the partially sunny cloud, finishing off the back of the circuit and sewing it up.

Here he is all poofy and ready to be sewn in. The threads sticking out of him are conductive threads, ready to feed into the cloud to continue the circuit for the vibe board up to the little sun.

I then used some more scraps to make a little path for the conductive thread to go along inside the cloud.

Put the sun where I wanted him, and sewed him in.

I then tested him to make sure that he still worked, here's me attaching a temporary power source to test it.

I then connected the little sun circuit down to the vibe board circuit, and tested it all again..

'ello!

Now I just need to stuff him and put the RFID card in. The RFID reader was being a little temperamental last night but seems to be working now, hopefully will still be working for the exhibition.

Arduino workshop

2009-05-29T20:52:00.007+01:00

Today I tottered off to a tinker.it workshop at old broadcasting house in Leeds, and it was immense. I learnt about the history of the arduino, which is funnily enough named after a pub. And how to make circuits with the big boy arduinos, the one I was given today was a Duemilanove, which seemed complex compared to the little lilypads I'm used to. So many holes to put things in, and analog and digital input go in two different places which seemed weird. Most of the day was spent making circuits for some of the different example codes that come with the arduino programming environment, which I was grateful for as the circuits seemed very different to what I make with the lilypads. I learnt how to use a breadboard to do prototyping, and got a little bag of toys!!

The above circuit is for the button example. I'm suprised how easy it is to prototype with it.

I'm glad i went, using a different arduino board with proper wires seemed a bit daunting. Shame that there's only a week left on my project. I feel like I'm a step closer to hacking stuff instead of making it from scratch.

oh yeah...

2009-05-28T15:47:00.005+01:00

Here's some of the visual elements I will be using in my final piece.

Partly Cloudy

Heavy Rain

Sunny

Light Rain

Cloudy

These will be mixed up with some other elements, along with some text telling you the city and some other info. Based on the sketches I made when thinking things through in my sketchbook.

making things

2009-05-27T19:34:00.003+01:00

Over the past week I have finally finished my knitting, been aggravated by conductive thread, and been testing LEDs.

I finally finished knitting my raindrops, and created the pouch to make the raindrop shape, and stuffed an RFID card into it.

Here is one of my raindrops, with my cloud who now has eyes. The raindrops aren't completely finished, I've left the bottom open so I can put some LEDs in them, and hook them up to a lilypad, but the basic shape is there.

I also worked on my sun a lot. Once the LEDs were put through I made the circuit with conductive thread, and tested it by temporarily adding a power source. Some of the LEDs are a little temperamental but do work.

This is the finished sun circuit. I've covered the back of the LEDs so they don't get caught up in the stuffing.

I'm also making a little sun, which will be attached to a wooly cloud to represent "partly cloudy". I've decided to put some LEDs into this one as well, as the bigger sun was relatively simple to do.

Here is the big sun partly sewn together and stuffed. The bottom has been left open so I can connect it to a lilypad later. My idea for using the LEDs is to get them to blink or flash when the RFID reader reads the appropriate card.

RFID controlled weather feed

2009-05-22T13:39:00.002+01:00

it works and it's so glorious.

The one thing is that it waits till the feed is brought in again before it tells you the weather feed, it isn't instantaneous. At the moment my feed comes in every five seconds which i thought was quite a lot. It would be nice if i could get it looping rather than just waiting. maybe loop(); will work. starting to think about how it's all going to look visually as well...

//weather for twelve cities!
// now waiting for button presses from lilypad
//trying to make it learn to shut up

// XML stuff
import simpleML.*;

// Serial stuff
// import the serial library:
import processing.serial.*;

Serial myPort; // the serial port you're using
String tagID = ""; // the string for the tag ID

XMLRequest aberdeen;
XMLRequest aberystwyth;
XMLRequest birmingham;
XMLRequest bristol;
XMLRequest dundee;
XMLRequest leeds;
XMLRequest liverpool;
XMLRequest london;
XMLRequest manchester;
XMLRequest newcastle;
XMLRequest oxford;
XMLRequest reading;

int startTime; //create timer
int counter = 0;

void setup() {
size(200,200);

// list all the serial ports:
println(Serial.list());

// based on the list of serial ports printed from the
// previous command, change the 0 to your port's number:
String portnum = Serial.list()[0];
// initialize the serial port:
myPort = new Serial(this, portnum, 9600);
// incoming string from reader will have 16 bytes:
myPort.buffer(16);

// create a font with the second font available to the system:
PFont myFont = createFont(PFont.list()[2], 24);
textFont(myFont);

//create and start up request

aberdeen = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0001&u=c");
aberdeen.makeRequest();

aberystwyth = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0203&u=c");
aberystwyth.makeRequest();

birmingham = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0018&u=c");
birmingham.makeRequest();

bristol = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0025&u=c");
bristol.makeRequest();

dundee = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0045&u=c");
dundee.makeRequest();

leeds = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0078&u=c");
leeds.makeRequest();

liverpool = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0083&u=c");
liverpool.makeRequest();

london = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0085&u=c");
london.makeRequest();

manchester = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0092&u=c");
manchester.makeRequest();

newcastle = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0098&u=c");
newcastle.makeRequest();

oxford = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0106&u=c");
oxford.makeRequest();

reading = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0117&u=c");
reading.makeRequest();
startTime = millis();//more timer stuff

}

void serialEvent(Serial myPort) {
// get the serial input buffer in a string:
String inputString = myPort.readString();
// filter out the tag ID from the string:
tagID = parseString(inputString);
}

String parseString(String thisString) {
String tagString = ""; // string to put the tag ID into

// first character of the input:
char firstChar = thisString.charAt(0);
// last character of the input:
char lastChar = thisString.charAt(thisString.length() -1);

// if the first char is STX (0x02) and the last char
// is ETX (0x03), then put the next ten bytes
// into the tag string:

if ((firstChar == 0x02) && (lastChar == 0x03)) {
tagString = thisString.substring(1, 11);

}
return tagString;
}

void draw() {
background(0);

//every 5 seconds, make new request
int now = millis();

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
aberdeen.makeRequest();
println("1");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
aberystwyth.makeRequest();
println("2");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
birmingham.makeRequest();
println("3");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
bristol.makeRequest();
println("4");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
dundee.makeRequest();
println("5");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
leeds.makeRequest();
println("6");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
liverpool.makeRequest();
println("7");
}

if (now - startTime > 5001) {
london.makeRequest();
println("8");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
manchester.makeRequest();
println("9");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
newcastle.makeRequest();
println("10");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
oxford.makeRequest();
println("11");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
reading.makeRequest();
println("12");
startTime = now;
}

}

//when request is complete
void netEvent(XMLRequest ml) {

String city = ml.getElementAttributeText("yweather:location", "city");

String temp = ml.getElementAttributeText("yweather:condition", "temp");

String weather = ml.getElementAttributeText("yweather:condition","text");

while(tagID.equals("2100764B24")) { // PARTLY CLOUDY --------------------------------------

if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy")) {
println("it is partly cloudy in " + city);
break;
}

if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy/Windy")) {
println("it is partly cloudy and a bit windy in " + city);
break;
}
else {
println("not a little bit cloudy " + city);
break;
}
}

while(tagID.equals("2100766B22")) { // CLOUDY --------------------------------------

if (weather.equals("Cloudy")) {
println("it's cloudy in " + city);
break;
}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Cloudy")) {
println("it's mostly cloudy in " + city);
break;
}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Cloudy/Windy")) {
println("it's mostly cloudy and a bit windy in " + city);
break;
}
else {
println("it's not cloudy in " + city);
break;
}
}

while(tagID.equals("210076572B")) { // LIGHT RAIN --------------------------------------

if (weather.equals("Light Rain")) {
println("it's raining lightly in " + city);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain/Wind")) {
println("it's raining lightly and a bit windy in " + city);
break;
}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain Shower")) {
println("there's a light rain shower in " + city);
break;
}

if (weather.equals("Showers in the Vicinity")) {
println("there's some rain showers near " + city);
break;
}
else {
println("it's not raining lightly in " + city);
break;
}

}

while(tagID.equals("21007643E3")) { // RAIN --------------------------------------

if (weather.equals("Rain")) {
println("it's raining in " + city);
break;
}

if (weather.equals("Rain/Wind")) {
println("it's raining and windy in " + city);
break;
}

if (weather.equals("Few Showers")) {
println("there's rain showers in " + city);
break;
}
else {
println("it's not raining in " + city);
break;
}

}
while(tagID.equals("21007683C0")) { // SUNNY --------------------------------------

if (weather.equals("Sunny")) {
println("it's all nice and sunny in " + city);
break;
}

if (weather.equals("Fair")) {
println("it's nice and fair in " + city);
break;
}

if (weather.equals("Moslty Sunny")) {
println("it's mostly sunny in " + city);
break;
}

else {
println("it's not sunny in " + city);
break;
}

}

}

hurrah.

2009-05-21T16:36:00.004+01:00

My USB connector for my RFID reader is here, and I've got it working relatively quickly. My reader is an ID-20, slightly different to the reader in "Making Things Talk", which is an ID-12, but the only difference seems to be the range it will read at (the ID-20 is a little stronger). I've used the example code from Making things talk to get it working in Processing, and I've now been able to give the cards their names!!

Maybe little 21007683C0 will be rain.. I imagine it will be a simple case of replacing the button code I've been working on with the RFID code, and instead of it looking for button presses it will be looking for strings of characters. One thing with the reader is that it can't tell when a card is removed, just when it appears, so any kind of resting state with have to be done with a timer.. if that will work...

sun

2009-05-18T23:50:00.003+01:00

Today I have been working on my sun. I have also done some knitting but the progress of that is not as interesting to document.

OMGZ I did like thirty more rows today that is loads LOLOLOLOLOL.

I'm getting a bit bored of the knitting so decided to do some sewing and work on my light emitting sun.

I cut out one white circle (using a bowl to get a nice round.. circle), and four yellow ones. I've decided to use two layers of yellow as the polycotton was actually quite thin, and I wanted it to be all bright and nice. I sewed the yellow bits together to make things a little easier on myself a bit later. The white layer is where the conductive thread will be, I left it loose at this stage.

I then figured out where I wanted to place the LEDs using pins to represent them. Two pins represents one LED. Using two was my pitiful attempt to make some holes for the legs of the LEDs to go through. The yellow looks so pale because my camera was freaking out at the brightness of it.

I then started putting the LEDs into place. This was painful. LEDs do not like fabric. Espesh three layers of it. I did master a technique using a pin to wiggle the legs through, some of the fabric got a bit pulled but I'm not that fussed. Anyone who mentions it will be forced to put an LED through three layers of fabric.

This is what it looks like with the LEDs in place. Now I'm on the stage where I'm making the circuit. Conductive thread hurts.

I guess I should work on some graphics. I don't want to. Graphics aren't fun. And if communication between processing and flash is done in the serial communication kind of way, the Signals from Arduino may cause interference... could use different channels but eugh.

forgetting things is sometimes good.

2009-05-17T14:48:00.003+01:00

I remembered to order my RFID reader and some cards..

forgot to order the USB connector. *face palm*

So while I've been waiting for that to appear I've been working on my code, using a button based system. As any other tech I use will use the same basic way of working; something sending a signal, something waiting for a signal, and when that signal is received running the script which looks at the weather feed and spurts it out when necessary.

(Actually it works a bit more like this, pulling in the weather feed every five seconds or whatever, and saving it. Then waiting for a signal stating what weather the user wants to look at, looking at the saved weather feed, and spitting out the appropriate weather.)

I've been using arduino for this, programming my buttony lilypad to send a signal to processing. I was having a few problems at first, once the signal was sent it wouldn't stop sending it, or processing wouldn't stop reading it. New button presses weren't even registering, which confused me a bit. I did a bit of research and found out how to debounce buttons, and now it works. Once a button is pressed it will keep displaying that weather until a new button is pressed. I would like to make some kind of rest state, where if nothing is pressed something else happens, not sure how to do it, may involve timers in processing, sending a resting state from arduino just jams the signal for button presses.

That might not make sense to you, but makes perfect sense to me. Here's the arduino code I'm currently using:

// edited the example to use two buttons
//edited the example further t o send a signal to processing.
//and debounce code from http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1241461190

int ledPin = 13; // LED is connected to digital pin 13
int switchPin = 2; // switch connected to digital pin 2
int switchPin2 = 5;
int switchValue; // a variable to keep track of when switch is pressed
#define BOUNCE_PERIOD 150

long last_read_time;
long last_value;

int val = 0;
int val2 = 0;

void setup()
{
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT); // sets the ledPin to be an output
pinMode(switchPin, INPUT); // sets the switchPin to be an input
digitalWrite(switchPin, HIGH); // sets the default (unpressed) state of switchPin to HIGH
pinMode(switchPin2, INPUT); // sets the switchPin to be an input
digitalWrite(switchPin2, HIGH); // sets the default (unpressed) state of switchPin to HIGH

Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() // run over and over again
{
// If we are past our bounce period
if (millis() - last_read_time > BOUNCE_PERIOD){

// Check the button
val = digitalRead(switchPin);
val2 = digitalRead(switchPin2);
// If the button has changed since last bounce period

if (val != last_value){
digitalWrite(ledPin,val);
if (val == LOW) Serial.print("A");
last_read_time = millis();
last_value = val;
delay(10);
}

if (val2 != last_value){
digitalWrite(ledPin,val2);
if (val2 == LOW) Serial.print("B");
last_read_time = millis();
last_value = val;
delay(10);
}
}
}

I've also been knitting my second cloud and light raindrop... the knitting never ends!!!!

fio's first futuresonic

2009-05-14T22:45:00.007+01:00

Gave her a numb bum. Probably a bit too much information there, but oh well.

The eyes were also sore after looking at all the interesting things people we're talking about and visualizing with slides. Unfortunately, my little student pass only got me into the conference part of the festival, which saved me trekking around manchester, but limited the fun I could have. But I did see some interesting talks...

I had actually planned to see Usman Haque's talk on real time environmental data, which i'm a bit gutted at missing, but ended up seeing the digital futures talk which talked about next generation broadband as a disruptive technology which i like the idea of. This was followed by a talk by Phillip Trippenbach who disscussed the addictive aspect of games and why we should use them for good. And Toby Barnes discussed the social effect of games and their basis on western ideas of having lots of money and material weath meaning you are winning at the game.

I think i probably ended up in the wrong room in the morning, but I keep getting the feeling I was in the wrong place at the wrong time for much of the day, as something interesting was always going on somewhere.

For the afternoon I went to see Jonah Brucker-Cohen who discussed his rather interesting work, two pieces he discussed that I liked were his drill hit counter, which is a drill connected to a website, which creates physical damage to a real world building whenever the web page receives a hit, and the toy police cars controlled by terrorist keywords found in emails, using the same software as the American government. I especially liked the theme of real world reactions to events in the online world. I also saw the discussion about the site some one once told me, which was victim to the fail wireless network, but I still got some pretty schweet business cards.

Check out my new knitting bag, which actually has a cloud in it...

more sketchbookyness

2009-05-13T22:43:00.002+01:00

mmm buttons.

2009-05-11T21:20:00.004+01:00

I've decided to look back into buttons, incase all the fancy RFID and wiimote trickery doesn't work. My backup idea is a simple button based system, with all the little toys or rather tactile bits wired up to a lilypad, with a boring button to press to send the signal, to see what the weather is like.

As I couldn't get ellie to work, I found a tutorial that tells you how to make switches. Turns out that one end of the button should connect to the - bit of the lilypad.

I've even got it working with two buttons, because I'm so clever!

fluffy little cloud

2009-05-10T18:29:00.003+01:00

I did lots of knitting, making rectangles as i don't know how to knit any other shapes and created some little pouches to hold the cotton wool stuffing.

I decided to abandon the pouches and just stick the cotton wool in on it's own, and the pouches made it look a bit flat. I then sewed all the pieces together and here is my cloud!

Just needs a wiimote stuffed inside it and maybe a face. Because faces are nice.

from arduino into processing

2009-05-10T01:38:00.003+01:00

is not as simple as I first thought it would be. This is for the light sensor I will be using in my final piece.

I've been trying two approaches, the first one getting processing to hijack the serial communication that the lilypad sends to arduino, to see the values the light sensor sends back. This was a bit weird, the values in processing were quite different and didn't make much sense, there didn't seem to be any correlation between the numbers I was seeing and the changes in light.

I've then been looking into firmata, which allows you to program the arduino board from processing itself, but this method recieved even stranger results, this time only printing out 0. It seemed to be receiving a signal from the light sensor but that was only to say that there was no light. I've found someone with a similar problem on the processing forum, so hopefully they'll be able to help me, but it's confusing me at the moment.

weather in twelve cities

2009-05-08T14:05:00.002+01:00

//weather for twelve cities!

import simpleML.*;

XMLRequest aberdeen;
XMLRequest aberystwyth;
XMLRequest birmingham;
XMLRequest bristol;
XMLRequest dundee;
XMLRequest leeds;
XMLRequest liverpool;
XMLRequest london;
XMLRequest manchester;
XMLRequest newcastle;
XMLRequest oxford;
XMLRequest reading;

int startTime; //create timer
int counter = 0;

void setup() {
size(200,200);
//create and start up request

aberdeen = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0001&u=c");
aberdeen.makeRequest();

aberystwyth = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0203&u=c");
aberystwyth.makeRequest();

birmingham = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0018&u=c");
birmingham.makeRequest();

bristol = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0025&u=c");
bristol.makeRequest();

dundee = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0045&u=c");
dundee.makeRequest();

leeds = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0078&u=c");
leeds.makeRequest();

liverpool = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0083&u=c");
liverpool.makeRequest();

london = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0085&u=c");
london.makeRequest();

manchester = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0092&u=c");
manchester.makeRequest();

newcastle = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0098&u=c");
newcastle.makeRequest();

oxford = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0106&u=c");
oxford.makeRequest();

reading = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0117&u=c");
reading.makeRequest();
startTime = millis();//more timer stuff

}

void draw() {
background(0);

//every 5 seconds, make new request
int now = millis();

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
aberdeen.makeRequest();
println("1");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
aberystwyth.makeRequest();
println("2");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
birmingham.makeRequest();
println("3");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
bristol.makeRequest();
println("4");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
dundee.makeRequest();
println("5");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
leeds.makeRequest();
println("6");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
liverpool.makeRequest();
println("7");
}

if (now - startTime > 5001) {
london.makeRequest();
println("8");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
manchester.makeRequest();
println("9");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
newcastle.makeRequest();
println("10");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
oxford.makeRequest();
println("11");
}

if (now - startTime > 5000) {
reading.makeRequest();
println("12");
startTime = now;
}

}

//when request is complete
void netEvent(XMLRequest ml) {

String city = ml.getElementAttributeText("yweather:location", "city");

String temp = ml.getElementAttributeText("yweather:condition", "temp");

String weather = ml.getElementAttributeText("yweather:condition","text");

if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy")) {
println("Partly Cloudy" + city);

}

if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy/Windy")) {
println("Partly Cloudy/Windy" + city);

}

if (weather.equals("Cloudy")) {
println("cloudy" + city);

}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Cloudy")) {
println("Mostly Cloudy" + city);

}

if (weather.equals("Mostly Cloudy/Windy")) {
println("Mostly Cloudy/Windy" + city);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain")) {
println("Light Rain" + city);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain/Wind")) {
println("Light Rain/Wind" + city);

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain Shower")) {
println("Light Rain Shower" + city);
}

if (weather.equals("Rain")) {
println("Rain" + city);
}

if (weather.equals("Rain/Wind")) {
println("Rain/Wind" + city);
}

if (weather.equals("Few Showers")) {
println("Few Showers" + city);
}

if (weather.equals("Showers in the Vicinity")) {
println("Showers in the Vicinity" + city);
}

if (weather.equals("Sunny")) {
println("Sunny" + city);
}

if (weather.equals("Fair")) {
println("Fair" + city);
}

if (weather.equals("Moslty Sunny")) {
println("Mostly Sunny" + city);

}

}

Making progress :D

In the final code it will only refresh the RSS feed every few minutes, at the moment I'm keeping it in seconds so it's easier to see what's going on quickly.

i keep winning

2009-05-08T10:06:00.002+01:00

It's rather strange. My ideas work. Here's my latest code, pulls in multiple weather feeds, in this case Leeds and London.

//woooooorks. weather in leeds & london

import simpleML.*;

XMLRequest leeds;
XMLRequest london;

int startTime; //create timer
int counter = 0;

void setup() {
size(200,200);
//create and start up request

leeds = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0078&u=c");
leeds.makeRequest();
london = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0085&u=c");
london.makeRequest();

startTime = millis();//more timer stuff
}

void draw() {
background(0);

//every 5 seconds, make new request
int now = millis();
if (now - startTime > 5000) {
leeds.makeRequest();
println("fio is epic");
}

if (now - startTime > 5001) {
london.makeRequest();
println("fio is awesome");
startTime = now;
}
}

//when request is complete
void netEvent(XMLRequest ml) {

String temp = ml.getElementAttributeText("yweather:condition", "temp");

String weather = ml.getElementAttributeText("yweather:condition","text");

if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy")) {
println("Partly Cloudy");

}

if (weather.equals("Light Rain Shower")) {
println("Light Rain Shower");
}

}

Now all I need to do is populate the list with cities and different weather conditions.

even more little big win

2009-05-07T13:19:00.002+01:00

//woooooorks.

import simpleML.*;

XMLRequest xmlRequest;

int startTime; //create timer
int counter = 0;

void setup() {
size(200,200);
//create and start up request
xmlRequest = new XMLRequest(this,"http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?p=UKXX0078&u=c");
xmlRequest.makeRequest();
startTime = millis();//more timer stuff
}

void draw() {
background(0);

//every 5 seconds, make new request
int now = millis();
if (now - startTime > 5000) {
xmlRequest.makeRequest();
println("fio is epic");
startTime = now;
}
}

//when request is complete
void netEvent(XMLRequest ml) {

String temp = ml.getElementAttributeText("yweather:condition", "temp");

String weather = ml.getElementAttributeText("yweather:condition","text");

if (weather.equals("Partly Cloudy")) {
println("Partly Cloudy");

}

}

It tells me that I'm epic, and that the weather in Leeds is Partly Cloudy.

little win

2009-05-07T12:47:00.004+01:00

After a morning of trying to break HTML requests into strings and then into individual words, I have decided to abandon the BBC RSS feed and instead go with yahoo's less regularly updated one. Because the XML of the yahoo RSS feed looks like this:

Instead of the state of the weather being addressed in the description tag, almost each attribute of the weather is addressed in it's own little tag. Which makes it a lot easier to work with! It's what mister shiffman used in his script as well, so there's some documentation of how to use it well.

dirty XML

2009-05-07T10:30:00.005+01:00

I've decided to look again at mister shiffmans simpleML library again, which I looked at briefly in my twitter top project, and found that not only am I a complete berk for not spotting the re-request HTML/XML command which I wanted so desperately and caused me annoyance when I couldn't figure it out myself, but that although it will save my program looking through the whole document, and therefore speed it up, it might still be not as useful as I'd like.

here's the BBC RSS feed for Leeds at the moment:

here's the bit that I'm interested in:

(Temperature: 9°C (48°F), Wind Direction: SW, Wind Speed: 40mph, Relative Humidity: 66%, Pressure: 987mB, rising, Visibility: Good)

Unfortunately, all the juicy bit I'm interested in is all in the same XML tag, so I can't use simpleML to all it's useful yummyness.

This causes a little problem with the words I'm using in my script. For example, "sunny" and "sunny intervals" both contain the word "sunny" so my script will see "sunny intervals" as "sunny". If that makes sense. The script I'm using at the moment is based on a script I used in my last project:

//pulling in feed of weather in stornoway

String[] tokens; //array
int counter;

void setup() {
size(100, 100);

//load file and split up words
String[] lines = loadStrings("http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/373/ObservationsRSS.rss");
String allText = join(lines, " ");
tokens = splitTokens(allText, " ,.?!:;[]-");

}

//so it's now pulling in that sentence and splitting it up.

void draw() {
background(255);
fill(0);

String s = tokens[counter];
counter = (counter +1) % tokens.length;
//look at the words one at a time please

//is the word there?

if (s.equals("sunny")) {
println("sunny");
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.

}

if (s.equals("white")) {
println("white cloud");
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.

}

if (s.equals("grey")) {
println("grey cloud");
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.

}

if (s.equals("light")) {
println("light rain");
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.

}

if (s.equals("heavy")) {
println("heavy rain");
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.

}

if (s.equals("clear")) {
println("clear sky (night)");
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.

}

}

Now i just need to simpleML it up.

it works... i think...

2009-05-06T18:10:00.002+01:00

You may remember my aforementioned buzz buzz, which is a little lilypad arduino circuit with has a light sensor and some vibe boards. I wanted it to vibe when it sees a certain amount of light. After much googling and hair pulling I couldn't figure out what was wrong with my original code.

I decided to come back to it today, and try again. After another couple hours of googling I found this site which had the kind of code i was trying to make. I looked at it and made some changes to my code and now it works!

//if there is light, vibe.

int pins[] = { 9, 10,}; // an array of pin numbers
int num_pins = 6; // the number of pins (i.e. the length of the array)
int ledPin = 13; // LED is connected to digital pin 13
int sensorPin = 0; // light sensor is connected to analog pin 0
int sensorValue; // variable to store the value coming from the sensor

void setup()
{
int i;

for (i = 0; i < num_pins; i++) // the array elements are numbered from 0 to num_pins - 1
pinMode(pins[i], OUTPUT); // set each pin as an output

Serial.begin(9600); //initialize the serial port

}

void loop()
{

int i;

sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin); // read the value from the sensor
Serial.println(sensorValue); // send that value to the computer

if (sensorValue > 450) {

digitalWrite(pins[i], HIGH);
delay(100);
}
else {
digitalWrite(pins[i], LOW);
delay(100);
}

}

It's a bit tempermental, I think it's more to do with the circuit instead of the light sensor or the code. I'm going to use the data from the light sensor to bring up a feed of where it's sunny now.

i suddenly feel more professional.

2009-05-05T15:18:00.003+01:00

I has business cards!

Part of preparation for Futuresonic and hopefully, maybe, possibly takeaway festival down in Londonshire. The pretty little box made me make a happy noise. First person to hassle me at college about it gets a free moo discount voucher. cos I'm nice.

I also feel a bit more loved. Which is always nice.

weather feeds

2009-05-01T09:54:00.002+01:00

I've been looking into what weather feeds to use, and found BBC backstage which lets you get access to lots of the BBC's APIs and feeds and such like. It turns out that you can easily get the feeds on the new weather pages anyway!

Here's what an RSS weather feed looks like:

It's actually quite descriptive, there's a description of the weather (sunny intervals, grey clouds or whatever), and temperature, wind direction, wind speed, relative humidity, pressure and visibility. I may not use humidity, pressure or visibility but will definitely use temperature and the wind data.

I've made some notes of the different weather descriptions, and since I'm only looking at the british isles so far it's all relatively similar. I may look into using worldwide data just so there's some variation in what weather the interface reports. If all britain has a really great or pap day in general, the data will be pretty much the same.

Now I just need to come up with some cute things that represent wind and sunny intervals.

mediamatic like RFID

2009-04-30T11:49:00.004+01:00

From telling you whether you are a cow, deer or wolf, dependent on what words you have put on your profile, to the ik tag which lets you post pictures to your profile whilst at an exhibition without all that annoying logging on typing, mediamatic love RFID.

The ik tag is specially designed for exhibitions, allowing the user to access their social network account without actually having to use a computer in the traditional sense (typing stuff in).

MN new site made me go...

2009-04-30T11:34:00.001+01:00

mmmmMNWAAAHHAHAHHAAAaaaaaa.

nnngggaaaa.

na.

looooook at all the neeeeeewwwssss.

wordpress.

2009-04-30T11:14:00.005+01:00

It feels like blasphemy saying that word on blogger. But one day I shall be leaving this beloved blog behind, on moving onto a better domain.

It has definitely made me come to the conclusion that I am not a web designer. Ideas in head do not come onto screen easily. I probably just need to practice a bit more but yes, time is of the essence.

So I've installed wordpress and tinkered around in it's PHP files, tried to get my head around it and make it look like how i want it to.

here's my progress:

I wanted pixels. They came out as boxes. I couldn't decide on colours at this stage, but I was mostly concerned about getting my head around it.

Not much changed here, but I like that gradient. ^_^ mmm... colours.

I tried to work on this idea a bit more, with DIRTY brushes in photoshop. But I still wasn't really happy.

So I've resignated myself to just using a good looking template. I'm going to try to customize it a bit but I think it's the way forward.

meet drip

2009-04-28T18:57:00.004+01:00

the slightly strange looking, RFID tagged wooly raindrop.

Inside his lovely wooly exterior is an RFID tag that when placed on the Mir:ror tells you what the weather is like in Norwich. Because Norwich is cool. I would like him to bring up places where it is raining, but unfortunately until i get my hands on another RFID reader, probably this one, with one of these, i'm stuck in the mir:ror's interface and way of doing things. Also the RFID reader i'm thinking of getting is discussed in Tom Igoe's "Making Things Talk", so hopefully getting it doing what i want it to do should be relatively simple.

I've actually had to re-teach myself how to knit, in order to make little drip. I thought that it would be quite nice if the objects are reminiscent of the clothes worn in that weather, and it also makes it more approachable. Technology is less scary when it's hidden behind a nice wooly jumper.

progress...

2009-04-25T17:59:00.002+01:00

slow and painful, till i get my loan through and get my hands on more shinyness.

i've been working more on my little buzz buzz, which detects light and buzzes away happily, but doesn't want to detect light and then let that determine wether or not it buzzes. annoying. it seems pretty simple it my mind but all the scripts i've tried don't work, and i can't find anything online...

here's the basic one i've started out with...

//if there is light, vibe.

int pins[] = { 9, 10,}; // an array of pin numbers
int num_pins = 6; // the number of pins (i.e. the length of the array)
int ledPin = 13; // LED is connected to digital pin 13
int sensorPin = 0; // light sensor is connected to analog pin 0
int sensorValue; // variable to store the value coming from the sensor

void setup()
{
int i;

for (i = 0; i < num_pins; i++) // the array elements are numbered from 0 to num_pins - 1
pinMode(pins[i], OUTPUT); // set each pin as an output

pinMode(pins[i], OUTPUT);
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT); // sets the ledPin to be an output
Serial.begin(9600); //initialize the serial port
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH); // turn the LED on
}

void loop()
{

int i;

sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin); // read the value from the sensor
Serial.println(sensorValue); // send that value to the computer

if (sensorValue == 'HIGH') {

digitalWrite(pins[i], HIGH);
}
else {
digitalWrite(pins[i], LOW);
}

}

there are several other variations that FAIL.

making a buzz buzz

2009-04-21T15:27:00.004+01:00

I a currently working on another little prototype, this time playing with light sensors and vibe boards, to make a little critter that buzzes around when there's enough light. i'm not sure if anything in my final piece with behave in this way, but i want to see how useful light sensors and vibe boards are.

so far all i've done is make a simple circuit, and run the program from this tutorial.

I've got the light sensor working, now i just need to get the vibe boards vibe-ing away and i will have a BUZZ BUZZ.

boredom + RFID tagging =

2009-04-19T13:44:00.003+01:00

RFID bracelet!

It's awesome but i'm not sure what to program into it. at the moment it simply brings up blogger as i really should blog a bit more, and tells my boyfriend that he's sexy, in a mister muggles voice.

Productive.

makes me feel all warm and fuzzy

2009-04-15T13:39:00.001+01:00

i has a sketchbook

2009-04-08T14:13:00.002+01:00

look at iiiiit.

that's EXACTLY what i'm on about

2009-04-03T11:40:00.003+01:00

"1. Screens are getting boring. It's really hard to impress anyone with stuff on a screen any more. However clever you've been. However much thought you've put in. However good the tech is. No-one's impressed. They've all seen better stuff in ads and movies anyway - when will onscreen stuff be as good as that? Whereas doing stuff in the real world still seems to delight and impress people. Really simple stuff with objects looks like magic. Really hard stuff with screens still just looks like media.

2. There are a lot of people around now who have thoroughly integrated 'digitalness' into their lives. To the extent that it makes as much sense to define them as digital as it does to define them as air-breathing. ie it's true but not useful or interesting.

3. The stuff that digital technologies have catalysed online and on screens is starting to migrate into the real world of objects. Ideas and possibilities to do with community, conversation, collaboration and creativity are turning out real things, real events, real places, real objects. I'm not saying that this means that these things are therefore inately better, or that the internet has 'come of age' or any of that nonsense. I just mean that there are new, interesting things going on IRL and that they have some advantages (and penalties) that don't apply online."

- Mister Russell Davies

Really Interesting Group at This Happened

trying to answer the "but why?" question...

2009-04-03T10:00:00.002+01:00

It's so frickn' horrible and it turns up whenever I do or think of doing anything. It doesn't appear in my own mind, instead it waits a few weeks and then shows up when i've gotten into whatever it is that I'm doing, and makes me feel like I actually have no understanding of what it is I'm doing.

So why do i do any of this?

a. It's cool.

Apparently this isn't enough of an answer. Although it's true.

b. Innate impulse

I tend to just mind-puke all this stuff up.

c. There is a point

Actually. I think there is. I think there's a point to taking stuff out of the screen. I want to not only bring tactility to the online world, by bringing it into the real world in the form of uber clever objects, but I want to show all the masses of data that is hidden away in the internet. So much stuff is hidden away in boxes and only visible on screens. This is boring. And if you're not staring at a screen you have no way of knowing it's there.

I'm not saying that the web is completely not interactive, or made up completely of fake interactions, I'm saying that the majority of these interactions are plain, old fashioned and boring. They feel too ethereal, and un-real.

I want to bring some reality and feeling to it by putting it into objects.

Yes. I said it. The internet is boring.

my problem...

2009-04-02T18:22:00.002+01:00

flash is starting to appeal to me

2009-03-31T16:46:00.003+01:00

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...

2009-03-19T15:09:00.002Z

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

2009-03-17T16:21:00.005Z

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...

2009-03-17T15:26:00.002Z

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?

2009-03-16T15:37:00.002Z

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...

2009-03-14T16:43:00.002Z

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!

2009-03-12T16:22:00.002Z

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

2009-03-05T19:20:00.002Z

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

2009-03-05T19:13:00.003Z

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

2009-03-05T11:22:00.003Z

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.

2009-03-04T21:21:00.002Z

wilkos is awesome.

2009-03-04T16:52:00.008Z

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.

beast

2009-02-28T13:14:00.005Z

of a book.

i'm going to have to buy it now. it's all good.

some bits that i like:

Our windows to the digital world have been confined to flat rectangular screens and pixels - "painted bits." But while our visual senses are steeped in the sea of digital information, our bodies remain in the physical world. "Tangible bits" give physical form to digital information, making bits directly manipulable and perceptible.
- Hiroshi Ishii

Everything that can be digital will be digital.

i wish...

2009-02-26T13:56:00.000Z

my floor could be made of this stuff...

made with processing and arduino.

wii remote

2009-02-26T09:49:00.006Z

As previously mentioned i have nicked one of my misters wii remotes to play around with. I want to at least research all the different kinds of possible interactions i can get between people, objects, and the floor.

I've got darwiinmote ORC, and i've got the wiimote chatting to the pooter:

That graph alone amuses me.

i'm also going to be looking at what other people have got working. Here's some wiiball:

and here's some wiipaint:

and some more drawing-ish goodness:

LBP

2009-02-25T22:57:00.002Z

if you don't like little big planet, you have no soul and are incapable of loving.

most. awesome. hat. ever.

2009-02-25T20:36:00.002Z

i want one.

the awesome hat is demonstrating an Augmented Reality class developed for flash. I'm not sure if i'll use this in my final piece, but i do want to have a play with it.

it's all coming together

2009-02-25T19:24:00.003Z

in a way.

I've used everything i've learnt about processing in the past few months to make this code. It imports text from a document (will be replaced with a RSS feed later), splits it into words and looks for a keyword. It also tracks the reddest pixel from a video feed. Once it finds the keyword (in this case, sunny) it looks for the reddest pixel and plonks a big bright sun on the screen.

yes, i'm watching scrubs.

here's the code:

//mushing lasts projects code into this projects colour recognition code to create a program that
//tells you whether it's sunny or not when it sees red.
//background turns yellow

import processing.video.*;
import processing.candy.*;
import processing.xml.*;

Capture video;
SVG yellowsun;

color trackColor;

String[] tokens; //array
int counter;

void setup() {
size(640,480);
video = new Capture(this,width,height,15);
// Start off tracking for red
trackColor = color(255,0,0);

smooth();
yellowsun = new SVG(this, "yellowsun.svg");

String[] lines = loadStrings("feed.txt");
String allText = join(lines, " ");
tokens = splitTokens(allText, " ,.?!:;[]-");
}

void draw() {

if (video.available()) {
video.read();
}

String s = tokens[counter];
counter = (counter +1) % tokens.length;

video.loadPixels();
image(video,0,0);

float worldRecord = 500;

int closestX = 0;
int closestY = 0;

for (int x = 0; x < video.width; x ++ ) {
for (int y = 0; y < video.height; y ++ ) {
int loc = x + y*video.width;
// What is current color
color currentColor = video.pixels[loc];
float r1 = red(currentColor);
float g1 = green(currentColor);
float b1 = blue(currentColor);
float r2 = red(trackColor);
float g2 = green(trackColor);
float b2 = blue(trackColor);

float d = dist(r1,g1,b1,r2,g2,b2);

if (d < worldRecord) {
worldRecord = d;
closestX = x;
closestY = y;
}
}
}

if (worldRecord < 100) {

fill(trackColor);

if (s.equals("sunny")) {
println("sunny");
yellowsun.draw(closestX-100, closestY-100, 100, 100);

} else {
println("not");
}
}
}

i went on a magical adventure

2009-02-24T17:14:00.004Z

to Hawkins Bazaar, which is a wondrous place populated with students who seem to constantly exclaim "OMGZ i so need one of these" yet never actually buy anything, and spent some pennies on some toys. i have now assembled a magical box of joy.

Magical box contains: wind up toys, noisy putty, bright post it notes, and a very dusty wii remote. it's the player two one so the mister wont miss it. The wii is so very lonely now the PS3 is stealing all my love and affection. more on that later.

Now all i need to do is try to come up with as many ways as possible to get this stuff interacting with a pooter. This is only my demo box of joy, the final box of joy will be much more amazing.

play: part two - Hybrid Toys!

2009-02-12T13:25:00.008Z

in part two of my little adventure into the world of playing, i am going to look at hybrid toys - hacking stuff to make it fun, in a computery interactive way.

This is a musical pot, by the good people at mediamatic. Inside each flower there is a RFID tag, which controls the pitch the pot resonates, while the big flower has a wii remote inside it which controls the tempo.

This little horsey will spout a recorded message while there is a light source. when it goes dark it shuts up.

I think i need to get some toys in and play around myself.... and some more arduino boards and some RFID tags and nick a wii remote and and and...

play: part one

2009-02-10T16:32:00.003Z

i've decided to do a series of blog posts about play, because it's what i'm interested in getting people doing. i'm not that interested in trying to find a boring commercial place for my work, so i'm going to justify it's existence by looking at what cool stuff other people are up to.

And although i've already partially defined what i'm doing (an interactive floor), i want to look into as many different interactions i can make between the users and the floor. This all isn't going to be stuff i can necessarily use in my floor, just stuff i like and think is interesting.

this is japanese based interactive music group type thing called d.v.d, causing a bit of a rukus. this performance is called 'flip', and is a pinball game controlled by their drums. i love the chaos in it.

"An audio generating computer and a second one that generates the visuals exchange signals through LAN using OSC. The tracks are played with max/msp. The drum sets are attached with a sensor called trigger and that transmits the vibration of the drums as signals to the midi interface. Those signals are then converted into midi note numbers. That midi data is then sent to the visual PC and creates the actions in the animations generated by processing software." - Jimanica

I want one of these so much it's actually causing me physical pain to watch this video:

tenori-on.
not that i would know what to do with it.

finds big bright red thing right in front of it...

2009-02-05T21:00:00.003Z

but still seems amazingly clever:

that little red dot is processing going "HEY! that's red!"

Found the code at daniel shiffman's site again. he seems to be the only person in the processing world that tells you how to do things in a simple straightforward way: ie. giving it to you minus the bollocks. YAY.

the lighting in my flat is crap.

brightness / colour tracking in processing

2009-01-30T21:22:00.006Z

Here i am sitting in the dark waving my phone about:

testing out a brightness tracking script in processing which finds the brightest pixel and puts a huge yellow blob on it. it only seems to work well in the dark, when i tried it out earlier in the day it kept jumping to bright pixels generated by my bright window. might be a bit problematic if i use brightness in my final piece, it'd have to be pretty dark to work.

Whilst researching the BlobDetection library i found puppet show a processing / unreal programmage that uses colour recognition to control a character in an unreal environment.

(you can tell they're cool, they play guitar hero)

here's a video of it in action and how it works:

I'm hoping after some rooting around in their code i'll get colour recognition working.

i like ymck..

2009-01-28T21:47:00.004Z

the band, and the colours.
although i do nothing in print.

i've decided to have some moo mini cards, for my business cards, as they are rather snazzy. and dinky.

i just need to come up with what designs i want to use, as i can use several designs for one bunch of cards.

some early mock ups of ideas:

i want to find a better font though.

my approach to this is to just keep throwing up ideas until i get a bunch that i like and will use.

ymck (the band) are awesome because they give away this.

flickr bahbee

2009-01-23T10:23:00.003Z

Before i get knee deep in lots of code that makes my head explode, i need to have a little think about what feeds i want to use, and how i could possibly get them into my floor. One feed i think i should and could and must use is flickr! (woo flickr.) As it's a lovely resource of lovely photos, which will make my floor lovely. It will also fit in with my idea of a tactile internet browser, because it's such a big site and has so many photos, hopefully it will bring up lots of different things.

An inspiration behind this is biscuit tin. which is freakin' lovely.
By freakin' lovely, i mean that it has a lovely sense of tactility even though it's completely screen based.

making self hire-able.

2009-01-21T13:23:00.002Z

As it's the last few months of the last year at college i better start making myself more professional, and get networking. I've set up a linkedin profile, which is slowly but surely getting more and more full. I'm also going to work on networking in other ways as well.

I've also decided to re-do my website, as i think it's a bit pap. Also since i'm no longer thinking of myself as a web designer i've decided to install wordpress which will make it a lot easier to update. another reason for using wordpress is that this lovely little blog is going to die in a few months when i finish college, so i better start working on it's successor. I also seem to work better under some constraints, so hopefully making a bloggy type site will help me concentrate on the assets rather than the layout.

I'm also wanting to include some processing or flash in the site, especially processing as it's what i'm meant to be into, but flash will probably be easier to implement.

I need business cards!

Interactive floors + tables

2009-01-17T16:04:00.007Z

Just raiding the exibition part of the processing site, but hey, it's research.

the first floor i found was Body Navigation by Ole Kristensen (Spring 2008)

they're playing pong, which went a bit crazy but is still awesome.

It's a performance piece, designed to react to the movement of dancers, so it's quite artsy and different from what i'm wanting to do, but it's responsive to the dancers movments in a quite natural way which is something i want in my piece. Infrared blobtracking was used to track the dancers movements, and the graphics were drawn by open gl in processing.

I've also been looking into interactive tables, two of which that i've found track object placement.

The London College of Fashion graduate show for 2007 and 2008 featured interactive tables by moving brands.

When a students card is place on the table, it brings up photos of their work. By turning the card you can scroll through their work.

Each card has a symbol or tag on the back like the one above, which is tracked by the program. Processing an reACTvision were used.

Another interactive table i've found is mæve by werk5.

The table was created to create "visual and tangible access to the social and intellectual networks behind architectural projects". I'm not quite sure what that means but i like how the objects placed on the table create connections between one another. It adds another element of play to the already tactile experience.

The table was created with Processing, reACTvision, and Gestalt.

jist of the new project:

2009-01-17T15:16:00.003Z

I'm going to create an interactive floor. Which is going to be kind of like a giant internet browser that you walk around in, but it only brings up feeds.

The general idea is that when an object or certain colour appears on the floor, it will bring up a feed relating to that object or colour, so a picture frame will bring up photos, green will bring up frogs etc.

I'm also wanting to make it a tactile experience, which is why i'm using picture frames to bring up photos. i'm also wanting the user to become part of it, so i'm thinking of providing hats for people to wear, which will bring up different feeds. so instead of just looking for the colour green, the program could look for a green frog hat, and then bring up the frog information when it appears.

here are some notes, that might explain my ideas better:

zero to one

2008-12-19T00:39:00.002Z

does anyone else get scared that the last idea they've had for something is the last idea they'll ever had? that the magical place where they suddenly spring up from will just dry up and instead of making things you'll just spend the rest of your life trying to have an idea that never comes?

i think this sometimes. it's usually in a lull between projects like this one. i worry that the last project i've done is the last one i'll ever do, that for my next one my creativity will just go *poof*, and i'll spend the rest of my life in a creative block.

i then i start thinking about creativity, because i honestly have no idea where it comes from. and then i start freaking out a bit because i've based my whole life on something that i don't even understand.

i'm also in the middle of an identity crisis, which doesn't help.

the final thing

2008-12-12T11:32:00.003Z

this is what it looks like, and that's what it all means.

final processing code:

//finds a word, sends a signal to the lilypad then stops the loop.

import processing.serial.*;

Serial port;

String[] tokens; //array
int counter;

void setup() {
size(100, 100);

println(Serial.list());
port = new Serial(this,Serial.list()[0], 9600);

//load file and split up words
String[] lines = loadStrings("http://twitter.com/fiowantscoffee");
String allText = join(lines, " ");
tokens = splitTokens(allText, " ,.?!:;[]-");

}

//so it's now pulling in that sentence and splitting it up.

void draw() {
background(255);
fill(0);

String s = tokens[counter];
counter = (counter +1) % tokens.length;
//look at the words one at a time please

// mood uno: cuppa -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

if (s.equals("coffee")) {
println("coffee");
port.write('A');
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.
}

// mood zwei: love -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

if (s.equals("love")) {
println("love");
port.write('B');
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.
}

// mood tres: sex -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

if (s.equals("sex")) {
println("sex");
port.write('C');
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.
}

// mood funf: fail -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

if (s.equals("fail")) {
println("fail");
port.write('D');
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.
}

// mood six: internet -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

if (s.equals("internet")) {
println("internet");
port.write('E');
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.
}

// mood seiben: twitter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

if (s.equals("tweet")) {
println("tweet");
port.write('F');
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.
}

// mood acht: geeking out -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

if (s.equals("geek")) {
println("geek");
port.write('H');
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.
}

}

final arduino code:

//getting it to keep one light lit up

int timer = 10000000; // The higher the number, the slower the timing.

// geeking
int geek[] = { 3, 4 };

// fail
int fail[] = { 5, 6 };

//internet
int net[] = { 7, 8 };

//twitter
int twitter[] = { 9, 10 };

// cuppa
int drink[] = { 11, 12,};

// sex
int sex[] = { 13, 14 };

// love
int loves[] = { 15, 16 };

int num_pins = 18; // the number of pins (i.e. the length of the array)
int val;

void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);

int i;

for (i = 0; i < num_pins; i++) // the array elements are numbered from 0 to num_pins - 1

pinMode(drink[i], OUTPUT);

pinMode(loves[i], OUTPUT);

pinMode(sex[i], OUTPUT);

pinMode(fail[i], OUTPUT);

pinMode(net[i], OUTPUT);

pinMode(twitter[i], OUTPUT);

pinMode(geek[i], OUTPUT);

}

void loop()
{
int i;

if (Serial.available()) {
val = Serial.read();

//cuppa --------------------------------------------------------------------------

if (val == 'A') {
digitalWrite(drink[i], HIGH);
}
else {
digitalWrite(drink[i], LOW);
}

//love --------------------------------------------------------------------------

if (val == 'B') {
digitalWrite(loves[i], HIGH);
}
else {
digitalWrite(loves[i], LOW);
}

//sex --------------------------------------------------------------------------

if (val == 'C') {
digitalWrite(sex[i], HIGH);
}
else {
digitalWrite(sex[i], LOW);
}

//fail --------------------------------------------------------------------------

if (val == 'D') {
digitalWrite(fail[i], HIGH);
}
else {
digitalWrite(fail[i], LOW);
}

//internet----------------------------

if (val == 'E') {
digitalWrite(net[i], HIGH);
}
else {
digitalWrite(net[i], LOW);
}

//twitter --------------------------------------------------------------------------

if (val == 'F') {
digitalWrite(twitter[i], HIGH);
}
else {
digitalWrite(twitter[i], LOW);
}

//geeking out --------------------------------------------------------------------------

if (val == 'H') {
digitalWrite(geek[i], HIGH);
}
else {
digitalWrite(geek[i], LOW);
}

}

}

that's all a lot shorter than i wanted it to be, but oh well.

ok..

2008-12-12T10:17:00.003Z

so half of it doesn't work, but lets concentrate on the nice half that does shall we?

LOOK! shiny.

i was originally going to have it looking for words that i had put into groups reflecting similar emotions, so the words coffee and tea would light up the coffee part, but as computers have no sense of common sense my approach of thinking "this technique worked for one word so it will work for a list of words" failed me. so i've just had to have one word for each bunch of LEDs. gutting. the app was behaving in a very different way, instead of going through the whole list of words in the program it just latched onto the first word it recognized, instead of going through the whole program to see if there was an earlier word that it recognized. i'm explaining that terribly and i apologize but that's what it was doing.

also, the LEDs signifying internet wont light up even though the circuit works. and the program looks fine.

this project has become very "flashish". i think i'm doing things right and i can't see any problems but it just says "NO" and wont listen to me.

making the final piece

2008-12-11T23:46:00.004Z

my hands are seizing up after all this.

this is all the glorious stitching i've done.

half of which wasn't working when i tested it for reasons unknown. i've checked it for shorts and i can't see any problems. so i've just glued up every loose bit of thread or knot that is tempted to fray in the hope that it will magically work in the morning.

mmm.... glue.

you never know.

the main problems are that every circuit i've made including my prototypes were extremely temperamental. if the tiniest threads cross each other that's it borked. conductive thread likes to fray into the tiniest annoying crit ruining threads.

also, i was unable to use the lovely lilypad LEDs that i now have a new found love of that i used in my protoyupes. because it would have cost me around £100 to have enough LEDs (i've already spent around £85 on this project, which i think is enough on my income thank you), and they were out of stock anyway. so i decided to use these square high flux or whatever LEDs that i read about in "fashioning technology" that i mentioned in an earlier blog post. that scratched at my fingers and fell out of the fabric after i stitched them in and generally made me want to cry.

now lets see if my program works.

fingers fingers ow ow

2008-12-09T21:48:00.002Z

it's blurry because my fingers are BLEEDING.

prickly prickly ow ow.

now i need to do the sewing! hope they all work...

i've decided.

2008-12-08T17:06:00.002Z

i'm not going to define what feed the piece has to follow. i'm going to make several versions of the code that follow several different feeds. it's up to the user what feed they want to follow.

yes.

incredibly short blog post.

more on 100 feelings felt

2008-12-05T15:29:00.003Z

These are some screen shots of the web site used to create the cards.

I like how soft and delicate it all feels, the burst of colour and the way the feelings fade in and out.

more patterny ideas

2008-12-05T09:54:00.002Z

mmm... LED tetris. thinking of using this to show geeking out / gaming.

trying to make something resembling thought bubbles to represent bored.

i'm still trying to come up with the words that i am going to use... need to trawl through some twitter feeds methinks.

playing with pixels...

2008-12-02T19:45:00.001Z

maybe 100 isn't enough.

i'm not the only one!

2008-11-28T13:38:00.004Z

true, he's using we feel fine, and he's making them into nice little cards, but Brendan Dawes is looking for feelings online.

here's a little sketch of how he envisioned it working, originally planning to use stickers.

and these are some of the cards.

I like this idea, as it gives you a static and tactile way of holding onto the feelings that would otherwise be lost in time. My idea is quite different, as my piece is going to be as fleeting as the data on the internet, but it's answering the same basic problem: getting emotional data offline and displayed in another way.

pictures taken from his flickr feed.

project related rant.

2008-11-28T13:11:00.006Z

I've been looking around various processing and arduino sites, trying to find a piece of work that is similar to my idea, and i'm not really finding it anywhere. It seems people are more interested in getting data or information from the real world into the virtual, instead of the other way round.

There are several reasons why i chose to do this project this way, and make myself this brief. One is that technology is constantly becoming more and more personal, with mobile phones and ever smaller laptops. I don't think the internet is going to stay on screen forever, i think there are alternative ways of displaying the information and i think it's going to try to integrate more into the real world.

The reason i chose twitter for this project as the website to bring into the real world and display in an alternative way is because it's a tool that quite a lot of people use. It's a tool that people use to communicate with each other and also with themselves:

This data that people update whenever they feel like expresses how they are feeling in that moment in time, or just what they're up to. But it just sits on a web page, or in their widget, or in a feed somewhere in the internet. this information that expresses their thoughts isn't being expressed in a very expressive way (too many expressives, i know).

The reason that i'm choosing to display this information in patterns is because i'm trying to get it away from a screen, i don't want to recreate a standard display. i want it to be visual as that's personally my favourite sense, and i want there to be a level of secrecy in what each pattern means as there is a level of deciphering that needs to be done in twitter, with all the leet speek and emoticons.

I admit that i do need to work on what words the program is looking for, but that just means trawling through the twitterverse to see what the most popular and most relevant phrases are.

I hope this finally gets people understanding what i'm trying to do. I'm finding it quite frustrating that no matter how many times i try to explain this, no body seems to get the point of it.

cool wearables

2008-11-28T10:12:00.004Z

I want this coat. It seems pretty unassuming, but is actually a tool for people who crave personal space in crowded places or are just shy. Depending on how infringed the user feels, the coat emits the sound of a dog barking. It can be anything from a poodle's yap to a rottweilers bark. By Suzi Webster and Jordan Benwick.

This lovely little piece of jewelry is by Mouna Andraos. It displays the distance to a special physical place, such as your home, in relation to where you are now. It's designed to make the user feel more attached to a place that is important to them, and make the world seem a little smaller or bigger.

Jayne Wallace made this hand worn piece for her friend, as a symbol of her relationship with her homeland in Cyprus. A sensor in Cyprus detects when it rains and controls the piece which is in London. When a set amount of rain has been detected, the flower blossoms, letting the wearer feel connected to her homeland.

This piece was also made by Jayne Wallace, made for another friend. The piece contains various files which reflect the wearers memories, stories and dreams. The piece projects these files onto digital displays near the wearer, acting as a constant reminder.

the lilypad (omg)

2008-11-27T15:03:00.002Z

The lilypad was developed by Leah Buckley and Sparkfun electronics. The aim of the project was to create a mass producible easy to program microprocessors to get a broad range of people experimenting with wearable technology.

This is the e-textile construction kit version 1.0, which introduced the idea of a construction kit for wearables. All the pieces were very square and bulky but show the basic idea.

Here are some soft version of the lilypad, which are more flexible than the mass producible version which i have, but couldn't be mass produced. The flexible version is made of conductive fabric, and the connections are made from conductive thread.

think i should explain it really...

2008-11-22T15:26:00.003Z

my boobs lighting up actually has a communicative purpose.

each LED shows when a certain word is found in this twitter feed.

and here's the code controlling it all:

arduino code:

//getting it to keep one light lit up

int timer = 10000000; // The higher the number, the slower the timing.
int happy[] = { 5, 6,}; // an array of pin numbers
int sad[] = { 7, 8 };
int meh[] = { 9, 10 };
int love[] = { 11, 12 };
int fuming[] = { 13, 14 };
int num_pins = 10; // the number of pins (i.e. the length of the array)
int val;

void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);

int i;

for (i = 0; i < num_pins; i++) // the array elements are numbered from 0 to num_pins - 1
pinMode(happy[i], OUTPUT); // set each pin as an output
pinMode(sad[i], OUTPUT);
pinMode(meh[i], OUTPUT);
pinMode(love[i], OUTPUT);
pinMode(fuming[i], OUTPUT);
}

void loop()
{
int i;

if (Serial.available()) {
val = Serial.read();
if (val == 'A') {
digitalWrite(happy[i], HIGH);
}
else {
digitalWrite(happy[i], LOW);
}

if (val == 'B') {
digitalWrite(sad[i], HIGH);
}
else {
digitalWrite(sad[i], LOW);
}

if (val == 'C') {
digitalWrite(meh[i], HIGH);
}
else {
digitalWrite(meh[i], LOW);
}

if (val == 'D') {
digitalWrite(love[i], HIGH);
}
else {
digitalWrite(love[i], LOW);
}

if (val == 'E') {
digitalWrite(fuming[i], HIGH);
}
else {
digitalWrite(fuming[i], LOW);
}
}

}

and the processing code:

//finds a word, sends a signal to the lilypad then stops the loop.

import processing.serial.*;

Serial port;

String[] tokens; //array
int counter;

void setup() {
size(100, 100);

println(Serial.list());
port = new Serial(this,Serial.list()[0], 9600);

//load file and split up words
String[] lines = loadStrings("http://twitter.com/allemotional");
String allText = join(lines, " ");
tokens = splitTokens(allText, " ,.?!:;[]-");

}

//so it's now pulling in that sentence and splitting it up.

void draw() {
background(255);
fill(0);

String s = tokens[counter];
counter = (counter +1) % tokens.length;
//look at the words one at a time please

//is the word there?
if (s.equals("happy")) {
println("happy");
port.write('A');
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.

}

if (s.equals("sad")) {
println("sad");
port.write('B');
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.

}

if (s.equals("meh")) {
println("meh");
port.write('C');
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.

}

if (s.equals("love")) {
println("love");
port.write('D');
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.

}

if (s.equals("fuming")) {
println("fuming");
port.write('E');
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.

}

}

i need to think more about the words that i'm looking for, they really need to reflect what people say in twitter.

my boobs light up!

2008-11-20T22:46:00.001Z

sheer awesome.

the mister approves.

this is what fail looks like.

2008-11-20T19:39:00.004Z

trying to sign my processing app in terminal and failing miserably.

following this tutorial.

obviously i've blocked out my name and password because i don't want any of you hacking my mac, but that's what i'm trying to get working. but it wont. i don't know why.

why didn't i just do animation?

having to cheat in an ugly way

2008-11-20T10:58:00.002Z

when / if i get this working, it will either be pure genius or horribly grotesque. Or simply not as efficient as i would like it to be.

Since the only thing that i've found that even points me slightly in the right direction on how to reset my processing app after it finds a word is this extremely uninformative thread in the processing forums, i think i'm going to have to cheat a bit.

Instead of getting the app to reset itself, i'm thinking of putting it in a web page that is set to refresh every few minutes, therefore refreshing the app.

hopefully.

the only problem with this is that since the app is being exported to a web page it needs to be signed, so it is allowed to access the lilypad. damn security restrictions on java apps!!!

This means i have to go into terminal and do some scripting on the java docs from there. SCARY. i haven't done any apple scripting on my mac (terrible, i know).

Although there is the redraw() function in processing, my problem is that my string of the twitter feed is pulled in inside the setup tag, which can only be loaded once. i've tried putting it inside the draw tag which can be loaded as many times as you feel like, but it isn't having it.

I'm also quite aware that we've got a crit tomorrow and what i have isn't that visually stunning. :/

looking at twitter

2008-11-14T18:41:00.004Z

I've now got a piece of code that looks at a twitter feed and sends that information to an arduino board:

arduino code:

//getting it to keep one light lit up

int timer = 10000000; // The higher the number, the slower the timing.
int happy[] = { 6, 7,}; // an array of pin numbers
int spiffing[] = { 8, 9 };
int num_pins = 6; // the number of pins (i.e. the length of the array)
int val;

void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);

int i;

for (i = 0; i < num_pins; i++) // the array elements are numbered from 0 to num_pins - 1
pinMode(happy[i], OUTPUT); // set each pin as an output
pinMode(spiffing[i], OUTPUT);
}

void loop()
{
int i;

if (Serial.available()) {
val = Serial.read();
if (val == 'A') {
digitalWrite(happy[i], HIGH);
}
else {
digitalWrite(happy[i], LOW);
}

if (val == 'B') {
digitalWrite(spiffing[i], HIGH);
}
else {
digitalWrite(spiffing[i], LOW);
}
}
}

processing code:

//finds a word, sends a signal to the lilypad then stops the loop.

import processing.serial.*;

Serial port;

String[] tokens; //array
int counter;

void setup() {
size(100, 100);

println(Serial.list());
port = new Serial(this,Serial.list()[0], 9600);

//load file and split up words
String[] lines = loadStrings("http://twitter.com/allemotional");
String allText = join(lines, " ");
tokens = splitTokens(allText, " ,.?!:;[]-");

}

//so it's now pulling in that sentence and splitting it up.

void draw() {
background(255);
fill(0);

String s = tokens[counter];
counter = (counter +1) % tokens.length;
//look at the words one at a time please

//is the word there?
if (s.equals("happy")) {
println("happy");
port.write('A');
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.

}

if (s.equals("spiffing")) {
println("spiffing");
port.write('B');
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.

}

}

it's not perfect. i just need to sort out a way of getting the program to delay then restart after finding a word. That piece of code is eluding me at the moment.

the else function is a LIE.

2008-11-13T13:40:00.002Z

but i have code that works the way i want it to, so i'm chuffed.

//the else function is a LIE. but the loop is working how i want it to, which is nice.

String[] tokens; //array
int counter;

void setup() {
size(100, 100);

//load file and split up words
String[] lines = loadStrings("words.txt");
String allText = join(lines, " ");
tokens = splitTokens(allText, " ,.?!:;[]-");

}

//so it's now pulling in that sentence and splitting it up.

void draw() {
background(255);
fill(0);

String s = tokens[counter];
counter = (counter +1) % tokens.length;
//look at the words one at a time please

//is the word there?
if (s.equals("happy")) {
println("happy");
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.

}

if (s.equals("spiffing")) {
println("spiffing");
noLoop(); //DON'T LOOP IT BAHBEE.

}

}

stalking allemotional:

2008-11-13T12:22:00.003Z

i've created a new twitter account, called allemotional, to use with my processing program. All it says at the moment is that it's happy, but as i test out more and more words it'll soon build up. I've also used yahoo pipes to create a RSS feed of the twitter feed that processing likes. It didn't like the twitter RSS very much.

I'm working on Liams mini mac, it's freaking tiny!!!

explanation

2008-11-11T20:39:00.003Z

'nuff said.

it is actually finding cheese

2008-11-07T13:50:00.003Z

in an RSS feed.

i made this code yesterday, but i didn't think it was finding cheese. i don't know if it was the server being dodgy or if i just didn't let it run long enough, but it is actually finding the word.

//Trying to get it recognizing words.
//Would be nice.

String[] tokens; //array
int counter;

void setup() {
size(100, 100);

//load file and split up words
String[] url = loadStrings("http://fionnualamurphy.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default");
String allText = join(url, " ");
tokens = splitTokens(allText, " ,.?!:;[]-");

}

//so it's now pulling in that sentence and splitting it up.

void draw() {
background(255);
fill(0);

String s = tokens[counter];
counter = (counter +1) % tokens.length;
//look at the words one at a time please

//is the word there?
if (s.equals("cheese")) {
println("CHEESY!");
} else {
println("no cheese.");
}
}

// trying it out on a RSS feed. actually works!

i've spent most of my day messing around with XML, getting the program to look inside specific tags, which could hopefully speed the whole thing up if i get it working, but at least i have something that works!!!

playing..

2008-11-06T20:43:00.002Z

with last years scripts....

cos it makes me feel like i know what i'm doing in processing.

still needs work.

it works...

2008-11-06T20:05:00.003Z

with plain old fashioned .txt files, haven't got it working with streams or plain old HTML yet.

cheesy.

The document it's reading only contains three words, the only three words i could think of at the time: "pleh", "cheese", and "moo".

it found no cheese!!

2008-11-06T14:11:00.005Z

After this it will now find cheese.
because i've typed in cheese.

The following code looks through my blog for the word cheese, and then prints the result.

//Trying to get it recognizing words.
//Would be nice.

HashMap words; //hashmap object

String[] tokens; //array
int counter;

PFont f;

void setup() {
size(500, 500);
words = new HashMap();

//load file and split up words
String[] lines = loadStrings("http://fionnualamurphy.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default");
String allText = join(lines, " ");
tokens = splitTokens(allText, " ,.?!:;[]-");
f = createFont("Calibri-Bold", 36, true);
}

//so it's now pulling in that scentence and splitting it up. It's also going to show it in Calibri-Bold, size 36.

void draw() {
background(255);
fill(0);

String s = tokens[counter];
counter = (counter +1) % tokens.length;
//look at the words one at a time please

//is the word there?
if (words.containsKey("cheese")) {
System.out.println("CHEESY!");
} else {
System.out.println("no cheese.");
}
}

// IT FOUND NO CHEESE!! SUCCESS!

There was no cheese.

EDIT: doesn't work, i'm sad now.

EDIT: Got it working with a .txt file, just not an RSS feed.

getting somewhere....

2008-11-06T12:39:00.002Z

I found some stuff on Daniel Shiffman's site about Bayesian Filtering, whilst i don't understand it completely i think it's what i've been looking for. Using Hashmaps you can search a document for words, and have the program state that it's found or how many times it's appeared etc. It's the system used to detect spam coming into your inbox.

I've found a relatively simple example in java, and a bit more complex version in Processing. i'm hoping to mush the two together to get a bit of code that works.

if you consider yourself to be a nice person...

2008-10-31T17:14:00.003Z

and you use social networking at all, in any sense, please come and join my new shiny ning site and chat about how social networking has affected you. If you think it's a good or bad thing, when you started using it, what sites you use. Wether facebook bores the crap out of you or if it's the centre of your life.

NINGY NING NING!!!

for the unbelievers

2008-10-25T14:30:00.003+01:00

it didn't work at the presentation yesterday because a bit of thread ripped. But my first Lilypad circuit works now.

It flashes LEDs. Simple enough but i'm glad everything is working. It's running an example sketch called Loop which I edited slightly so it found the LEDs.

it's here.....

2008-10-17T21:10:00.002+01:00

and it came in a pretty little box and it's tiiiiiny.

i want to play now.

just show words

2008-10-14T17:03:00.002+01:00

This code, put into Processing, shows you the words that are in my blog.
It looks for the things that separate words, and then spits them out.

As it's reading an RSS feed it often spits out some HTML but that not really a problem, i just need it to be aware of where a word ends and begins.

//i'm now trying to break the script down more, as i don't want it to tell me how many times it finds the word, i only want it to show me it.

PFont f; //holds onto the font
String[] fiosblog; //array to hold onto the text in my blog
int counter = 150; //where to start in the text

//delimiters (stuff that breaks up the words)
String delimiters = " ,.?!;:[]";

void setup() {
size(400,400);

f = loadFont( "Dialog-32.vlw" ); //loads the font

//this bit imports my blog anf makes it into a array of strings
String url = "http://fionnualamurphy.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default";
String[] rawtext = loadStrings(url);

//join the strings back together, into one long string
String everything = join(rawtext, "" );

// the big string now needs to be split into individual words
//using splitTokens() a spaces and punctuation are the delimiters.
fiosblog = splitTokens(everything, delimiters);
frameRate(5);
}

void draw() {
background(255);

//pick a word
String theword = fiosblog[counter];

//Display results
textFont(f);
fill(0);
text(theword,10,90);
stroke(0);
fill(175);

//move onto next word
counter = (counter +1) % fiosblog.length;
}

I've basically just taken this code by Daniel Shiffman and edited it so it only presents me with the word.

I've got it separating words, now i just need it to start recognizing them. I think that's going to be the hard bit.