Out2Sea

Today was another work day, so I decided to do a short animation with AfterEffects. Since I have practically no experience with the program, I wanted to see if I could animate one of my favorite pictures ever. Here is my inspiration for Day #4 of 5-in-5:

I took this picture when some of my friends and I were coming back from a weekend on Amantani Island on Lake Titicaca (in Peru), and it was breathtaking. I wanted to see if I could deconstruct this picture in AfterEffects and make the water, clouds, and sunlight move, so here is the finished result.  The resolution is relatively low because I wanted to minimize render time and disk space.

1 comment | August 1st, 2008

The U Can’t Resistor Me Dress

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For Day#3, I tried a wearable, and almost made it to completion. I hit a snag at the very end when my Lilypad Arduino would not upload. I am going to continue debugging to try and figure out why it will not upload programs. I began by selecting a pattern and cutting it out and sewing it up.

Then I worked on the circuitry, which was just a few purple leds which will light up the darker the environment gets.  Everything worked great on the breadboard, but I could never get the Lilypad to upload (I consistently got an “initialization error”).

Here are some pictures of the finished dress before the circuitry was added, and details of the collar region with circuitry:

In these two pictures, you can see the green USB component to upload programs to the Lilypad. Unfortunately, this is where I hit a snag.

(front side of collar region-the collar is adorned with rhinestones, leds and a Lilypad Arduino) (underside of collar region)

I will update this post when I get the Lilypad uploading properly.

1 comment | July 31st, 2008

PCompatible Earrings

Today I made the PCompatible Earrings, earrings made of physical computing (pcomp) parts. I wanted a short design exercise since I work today, so yesterday I made these sketches:

Ultimately, though, I let the components themselves dictate the design. I will let you see which parts you can identify. Here is the finished result!

2 comments | July 30th, 2008

“Welcome Robot, 1.5”

He’s new and improved, and now with Ironman colors! It’s “The Welcome Robot, 1.5”!
On Day#1 of 5-in- 5, I made the “Welcome Robot, 1.5” which greets ITPers with a friendly wave at times when Matt is not at the front desk. This is the latest version of the “Welcome Robot” which I started this summer in the “Sociable Objects” class (click here for more on the 1st version).

Here is the “Welcome Robot, 1.5” when Matt is at his desk.

It is motionless and the led lights are off. When Matt leaves, he can press a simple switch which then turns on the led lights, indicating that the robot is in sensing mode.

This version featured Ironman colors (red and gold) and a feather servo which makes the robot wave. The wave is triggered by a specific input from a long range sonic ranger, indicating a passerby. Upon sensing a certain value from a range sensor, the robot’s arm waves to greet the passersby. As you will observe in the video, I definitely have to do something about his soldier-like wave and make it more toned down. Since I only had a day for this version, however, I am going eventually add a sound greeting which will accompany the waving arm, and an xbee component which will sense when the elevator doors open. This way, I can better predict if the range sensor is sensing someone arriving or departing, and only have output for people arriving.

Here is a short video of the “Welcome Robot, 1.5” in action: http://www.vimeo.com/1426246

I would recommend a 5-in-5 type of project for anyone who wants a creative challenge. Knowing that you have only one day to complete a project and document it is daunting, but then when you finish you have a sense of accomplishment that you did so much under serious time constraints. Until tomorrow…

4 comments | July 29th, 2008