The final projects for my Fundamentals of Physical Computing class at SVA’s Interaction Design MFA program are now all posted online. (You can also view the documentation from their labs for this foundation class.) They were a great group of students and I’m looking forward to seeing all the interactive magic they’ll create going forward. In the meantime, check out:
- Touchstone by Angela Huang, Jeff Kirsch and John Finley
- Mindful by Beatriz Vizcaino, Colleen Miller, Gene Lu and Stephanie Aaron
- InterFACE by Carmen Dukes, Clint Beharry, Evinn Quinn, Katie Koch and Kristin Graefe
- Breaktime by Chia-Wei Liu, Michael Katayama and Richie Lau
- …and the mystical Tarot Trunk by Derek Chan, Eric Onge and Russ Maschmeyer
Congratulations to my students on some excellent achievements in our summer Sociable Objects Workshop at ITP. They created a full-floor permanent mesh network in a single day, then used it to concoct a toilet-activated display fountain for water conservation over a mere weekend. In the last weeks of class these hotshots produced five final projects including a sand painting sourced from distributed sound sensors, an anti-confusion teaching feedback mechanism, a musical instrument played from networked kites, a wearable dance photography system for capturing leaps, and a relationship-enhancing networked pedometer. (Links to be added as documentation becomes available.)
Everything they did was with full ZigBee protocol so they are now armed with the basic skills to create interactive wireless networks of any size for their amazing purposes.
Nick Hardeman at Parsons put my clock code in a monster. His sun-bringing Morning Monster is awfully cute, but I’m still suspicious that something nefarious might be lurking behind those button eyes…
He’s got a video of it serving up sunshine.
ZigBee Internet Gateway at ITP
Getting physical projects to talk to the Internet can be tricky. Students making Networked Objects have always had tons of choices, but each with a significant downside:
- Embedded Ethernet modules like the XPort and Wiznet Shields cost about $40 and tether your project to a thick cable.
- Embedded WiFi modules like the WiPort and MatchPort cost $70 – $120 and require extensive manual configuration each time they change networks
- Cell phone modules start at around $150 – $270, require intricate plug converters, a detailed setup and of course a SIM card and data services
- Bluetooth connections require an individually paired base station like a laptop or cell phone within less than 30 feet, and frequently don’t even stay in that pairing
Now each of these methods has an upside too. Ethernet is fast and reliable, WiFi easily found, cell modules can connect from anywhere and Bluetooth has a zippy data rate and a smart-looking logo. But I’ve always thought it would be great if you could just attach a microcontroller to a cheap radio and hit the Internet wirelessly with a simple URL. No thick cable, no tricky setup, no IP address management, no encryption configuration, no data plan and no pairing.
The ZigBee* Internet Gateway I’m developing at ITP aims to accomplish just that. Students link their radio to the Gateway, then simply print a URL to the serial port and wait for the results to come back from the Internet. Each radio costs as little as $19. Using Digi’s ConnectPort X2 as a base, I’m developing code in Python that processes these requests in a way that’s simple and open to everyone. This afternoon I installed a beta test unit for my Networked Objects class to try out. Right now it supports HTTP and HTTPS requests, with plans to expand to email, FTP and XBee I/O direct formats if there’s a demand for that. I’ve started a basic documentation page for the ITP community and will publish the Gateway code when it comes out of beta.
ITPers who are interested in testing should contact me.
* the beta is running 802.15.4 since more students have those modules. Full ZigBee will be included after testing.
Wearable radios are coming for your clothes! The LilyPad XBee sew-on ZigBee boards just headed out for manufacture. We finished testing the final green prototype version, nudged in a few improvements and about four weeks from now they’ll be commercially available.
Pricing and source to be announced when the boards go live. For now, we can tell you they’ll definitely be purple.
The November 2008 issue of Wired Magazine just hit the stands. It features an article by Clive Thompson about open-source hardware that includes Botanicalls, with a picture of our new Botanicalls Kit. The article focuses on Arduino with great quotes from our friends at NYCResistor, where I’ll be co-teaching a class later this year. Look for more cool Botanicalls news in the next few weeks.
Botanicalls in Wired
The ITP Resident Researchers held a show “An Evening with the Residents” to share the work we did this year. Projects I took part in, 7 in 7, the ITP Alumniblender, the XBee LilyPad, a Proximity Maintenance device, real-life Battery Research and the Botanicalls kit. Gabe, Demetrie, Kate, Jenny, John and Jeff all showed great work and I’ll miss them intensely when our year-long positions wrap up this month. Great job guys!
My friends and family are always coming and going. I sometimes follow their flights, especially when they are showing up at my door, or departing on a life-expanding adventure. It’s easy to do if I stay in front of the computer with a web page open. However, when I’m at the computer I’m usually working on something else that gets in the way, and away from the screen there’s no information at all.
For today’s 7 in 7 project I created a Desktop Flight Tracker that physically indicates the altitude of a live aircraft flight from online data. The system includes an Arduino microcontroller with embedded Internet connection and a small servo motor attached to a model jet airliner. Once the airline name and flight number is loaded into the system, the model jet rises off the desktop just as the real flight takes off. The model continues to rise as the actual plane climbs to its cruising altitude, then holds its position. (I like to imagine that tiny cocktails are being served inside.) For descent and landing, the model lowers itself to the desktop, just as the real flight touches down at its destination. Please keep your seatbelts fastened until the aircraft has come to a full stop at the gate.
In the hour or so since I got the prototype working properly, I’ve tracked a couple flights as they cruised into the New York area, descended and touched down at JFK—both informative and entertaining. Bon voyage!
There’s plenty of clock projects that use the open-source Arduino microcontroller platform, but to my knowledge, none of those projects are themselves officially open-source. So as a quick one-day project for 7 in 7, I started creating clock code that anyone can use and extend for their own projects, under the GPL Creative Commons license. So far it’s simply code for tracking weekday and time in a cyclical pattern, along with some buttons to set the clock. There’s plenty of room for creative additions, and that’s just the point. Use the Open-source Arduino Clock code as a base to create something amazing!
For my first 7 in 7 project I created a prototype for a proximity maintenance device. This is a radio-enabled bracelet or necklace worn by two individuals who do not want to become separated in a crowd. As long as the devices can maintain radio contact, nothing happens. However if the individuals move far enough apart or lose radio contact, their devices begin vibrating. At this point they can seek each other out and reunite.
The prototype I made uses XBee radios paired with Arduino microcontrollers to manage the radio messages and produce the alerts. The challenge of a 7 in 7 project is to complete it in 24 hours, therefore these devices are still in a fairly rough state. Luckily they are fully operational and can easily be worn outside for real-world testing. Thanks to Kate for helping with a quickie sleeve mount and cool sealed vibrator motors with magnetic mounting snaps. One project down, six to go!
