A tool for teaching binary finger counting. You hold up the correct finger representation of a binary number and the chip translates to decimal on the 7 segment display. This was a lot of fun to build, and a lot of work too. Very rewarding to have the idea drive development, rather than the last few projects where technology lead the plan. Learned a lot about BASIC, including that it doesn’t have a power function so you have to write your own. My code includes subroutines for running the seven segment counter display, which could come in useful later.
Archive for September, 2005
Resistors in the analog circuit seem useful for changing the behavior of the associated sensor. My glove project might need this, but I’m not sure if it will be important. You can also note that I’ve added various capacitors to smooth out the voltage. Had to find out for myself that I needed them, but I guess I have to come to terms with my own learning process. 
The serial circuit goes to the computer screen via 9600 8-N-1. Memories of my “high-speed” modem setup from 1992 flood back to me.
This looks like it will be really useful for debugging. I wonder if doing a USB interface is any more difficult?
The pot’s sensitivity changes with resistors, and differently depending upon whether the resistor is placed before or after the pot.
This demanding reading asks us to recall Marxism, Freud and an era that predates the current pervasiveness of film. Ironically, it discusses the dilution of art out of context, because it must itself be read out of context.
I think Benjamin would have appreciated Marshall McLuhan’s concept of media as message. He clearly states that during the nineteenth-century debate on whether photography was art, critics ignored the question of whether (and how) photography was instead changing the definition of art itself. Another intellectual of this era, Jean Piaget described children as learning by both assimilation (bringing things into known categories) and accommodation (transforming the definition of categories when assimilation fails). While Piaget’s theory of child development has itself been transformed by later research into a historical relic, it is well worth considering how new technologies go through a similar process, and face the same questions as photography once did. For example, there is considerable debate on whether bloggers are journalists. We would be wise to ask whether the definition of journalism will have to be transformed to accommodate the blog.
Continue reading ‘Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’
Here’s three images that have been manipulated:
Continue reading ‘Three Manipulated Images’
This is a prototype of the sensor glove for my binary finger counting project. The flex resistors are sewn directly to the glove. I only was able to obtain three working ones this week, so the little finger and thumb still need to be done. The little finger shouldn’t be a problem, but attaching a flex sensor to the thumb is going to be challenging, due to the thumb’s unique physiology and motion dynamics.
This glove will stretch to fit a variety of medium hand sizes. For people with very large or very small hands, a different glove will probably be needed.
We saw Robert Smithson’s “Floating Island” on the Saturday when it opened at Pier 46. Most of the time was spent waiting. Pier 46 is covered with Astroturf, making it an ideal venue to wait for an artificial floating island. In fact the artwork seems to be about artifice. After several rounds of free virgin caipirinhas and tiny foie gras treats lavished on the crowd by expectant (and possibly misguided) restaurants, there were some unintelligible “remarks” by Smithson’s entourage. In the middle of the mumblings a tug appeared on the Hudson, with a tiny barge behind it. Several onlookers near us wondered aloud if that was “it” because it seemed rather small for all this fuss. But indeed that was it and as the duo approached the pier they didn’t seem quite so tiny after all. The rusty barge bobbed up and down in the waves behind the obviously neatly repainted tug. This was an exercise in both relationships and artifice.
Continue reading ‘Floating Island’
Marshall McLuhan has always struck me as one part visionary and one part kook. His argument that the “message” of a particular technology is the change it introduces into human affairs. Certainly this is a brilliant observation. There is not only an effect from what a train delivers, but also effects resulting from the speed of delivery and the new types of deliveries that can be made. McLuhan describes a societal trend away from sequence to configurations. This parallels a trend in the sciences away from the so called “clockwork universe” of Newton to the conceptions in his time of randomly distributed parameters. Today the sciences are attempting to tackle chaos itself, so if anything we’re headed beyond McLuhan’s configuration based culture into something potentially far stranger.
Continue reading ‘Medium Message’
This project was to create a binary number game. The red light blinks between one and fifteen times. Then switches (in this case highly economical bare wire contacts) are closed to match the number in binary. So for 5, the first and third switch would need to be closed. When the correct binary number has been entered, the green light blinks rapidly, then the process begins again.
The code for the binary game will be repurposed next week to build an analog glove that replaces the switches.
The big problem I encountered was initially failing to use voltage stabilizing capacitors. Once I lit up more than a single LED, the chip’s behavior became erratic. Adding the capacitors (pictured) immediately solved the problem. Guess that’s why everyone kept telling me to use ‘em. But some things have to be learned independently.
Mostly this was an exercise in getting comfortable with the PIC Basic code. The code uses variables, conditionals and subroutines to get the job done. This should be very helpful for next week, when I repurpose it to work in analog.
