Final Project: Team Meetup

Our team also met up for the first time yesterday to discuss ideas for the final project. Each person was to bring an idea to the meeting (though it didn’t necessarily have to be fully developed).

When we presented our revamped choker last week, Greg mentioned using heat as a variable that Arduino could read. His suggestion was to have the user wear the choker and jog around while a new sensor (thermosensor? is this costly…?) detected body heat. Another idea that is similar to this is to use a touch/pressure sensor to detect a faster heartbeat.

I really liked the idea of using body heat for an Arduino reading. It’s overlooked in the creation of ‘embodied computing’ sensors (at least, for our class, although this may have been due to inability to get a thermosensor and/or awareness of it) most likely because people are focused on the flexing and movement of typically-used joints (the hand, for example, or the foot). I started researching “embodiment” and “thermodynamics” and somehow stumbled across “negentropy”, something a “a living system exports entropy in order to maintain its own entropy at a low level” (Wikipedia). I thought we could work slightly off this model (here is where the idea breaks down) and have a thermosensor detect the wearer’s body temperature and project more or less heat onto their skin. The problem is, while it’s possible to read a person’s temperature, it’s rather hard to project a higher or lower temperature onto their body without using a fan or heater and, also, to incorporate the ‘embodiment’ theme covered throughout the course.

In the end, we decided to go along with Oliver’s idea: the “Ghost Baby”, a being that is everywhere at once (not capable of being seen) but with which the user can interact with. Reaching out to it can trigger a movie clip/sound effect (this has not been decided upon yet) and different actions will affect its mood.

Post-Presentation II

Today, we presented our choker project for the second time. We modified it according to Greg’s main concern after the first presentation of our project: that it sped up and slowed down too quickly and erratically. Thus, we decided to change the purpose of our project entirely; instead of having the choker help relieve the wearer’s stress, it helped add to it.

Changing the idea behind it led to us making a choker that functioned as an alarm system. The choker gives off radio static, which gets louder if the wearer is stationary/immobile, and says to 'wake up, wake up!'. The static will remain loud until the wearer chooses to do something about the volume and bob their head to 'wake' themselves up; this prompts the 'congratulations, you're awake!' statement from the choker.

Although we could not incorporate the suggestions in my previous post of finding a larger choker (we shopped everywhere and not a larger one in sight), using more sensors (only one sensor was to be used for this assignment, a continuation of the last) and of "talking" to the machine (this did not apply to revamping our previous project, either) we managed to put together a piece that definitely improved on its predecessor.

Here are some images of our project in action:

A close-up shot of our project. The wires were cleverly hidden in Stephen's pocket. (top image)


Stephen demo-ing our piece. (bottom image)

Final Project: Team Formation

I forgot to mention in my last post that Stephen and I have formed a team with Oliver and Katlynn. Like Stephen has stated over on his blog, their project initially was a switch controlling pitch and volume of a sound file, while their second was pressure sensor-based: they could throw a ball into the air/juggle to manipulate sound. As neither Stephen nor I have worked with pressure sensor before, using a sensor like that for the final project might be an interesting learning experience.

We discussed very briefly some ideas for the final project and one of them sounded truly intriguing: the idea of the "Ghost Baby". Although not visible, it is fully interactable. I don't quite know how it's going to be put together or what kind of materials we plan on using, but I expect we can discuss that more in-depth later next week, when we have set a meeting time/place.

Post-Presentation and Re-Evaluation

We presented our choker project yesterday. Things went well, and feedback from Greg was pretty good (although our stress relief and speeding up/slowing down the song accordingly was a little out there...?). We have started talking about ways to expand our idea using the wireless Bluetooth Arduino.

Some ideas we would like to improve on are:

1) One Size Fits All: finding a new choker so that it's not custom-fitted for only one person. As of now, we are finding that if other people want to wear it, it must be adjusted and placed on a "correct" area of the neck in order to get proper readings from MAX/MSP.

2) More is Better: using more sensors would greatly enhance our ability for movement. Since the neck is limited in movements in comparison to spatiality (and compared to other limbs), using more sensors will help with gestures. If we find we're being limited too much by the neck, we could try testing on a different limb altogether.

3) Man to Machine: having the user "talk" to the machine via gestures would be a really neat concept to put into practice. For example, a computer can ask: "Do you want to play the sound file? Yes/No" and the wearer can shake their head or nod, depending on what they want. The sensors in the neck can relay the message back to MAX/MSP, and play the file or not. (Obviously, it would need more commands than just asking whether to play a file: if the user says no, it would be a dead end).

We're still brainstorming, so any/all/none of these suggestions may be implemented.

Main Idea P2: Modification and Construction

After talking over our main idea in class (Week 2), Stephen and I decided to modify what kind of sensory input it received. We decided that making a choker that detected breathing would have problems picking up air (the sensor would most likely need to be extremely sensitive to detect really small puffs of inhalations/exhalations). Instead, we decided to have the choker detect head movements (which is perhaps more fitting for a body interface course).

For the sound/music aspect of the patch, initially, we decided to pick something indicative of relaxation (doing neck exercises indicates a need for stress relief).

We have encountered numerous problems while building this project. First of all, when we constructed it and attached it to the Arduino, the program would lag horribly on Stephen’s computer. We tried running it on the lab’s Mac (no luck) and on one of the library’s Macs. The latter required downloading a crucial aspect for the Mac in order to run the Arduino properly and also installation aid (which we received from ACS). For all the effort, the patch still did not work. At this point, we tried running it on a different laptop -and it ran perfectly fine. Puzzled, we started looking at the different components of the patch and realised that the most important object in the patch -the one getting input from the Arduino -was what made the machine lag. However, when we tried using an older version of MAX/MSP, the program ran fine, without any lag at all (finally….).

Here are images of our progress: