Tim Stutts: ITP Project Blog

I got the pet and the base communicating smoothly today, after tweaking response and request time between the two.  The moral: listen a lot, talk less.  Watch the video of them talking over wireless here.  Or download source code.

Artists involved: Tim Stutts, James Daher, Keith Conway, Youjeong Paik

a glowing collective mood indicator is influenced by several satellite individual mood indicators throughout a space, providing a unique emotional playground for light and sound.

Mood Base uses a Zigbee radio protocol, where a coordinating Zigbee, housed within a large orb placed on the floor of ITP, sends out a steady stream of repeating numbers (1,2,3,4,etc.) to a call-and-response network of radios is hand-held enclosures within close proximity of the base station. These enclosures, when called, send out their current mood status, determined by a potentiometer controlling pulse (excitement level) and another controlling negative-positive (blue-green), on built-in LEDs and also to the Mood Base, where they are summed into a more complex light display, and sound projection (low drones with changing harmonics), both indicative of the collective mood. The light programming will be controlled by Arduino and the sound generation will be controlled by Max/MSP. Users experience Mood Base in a darkened space, standing around the base station and beaming out their emotions to the group.

Mood Base plans to debut at the ITP Winter Show 2007.

source code:

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James Daher, YouJeong Paik, Keith Conway and myself have teamed up for the Collaborative Mesh Network Midterm. Our assignment is to design build a network of involving Xbee radios that responds to two constant streams of numbers–one repeating (1,2,3,4,1,2…etc) and once cumulative (234,235,236,237,238…etc)–transmitted wirelessly from Professor Faludi’s Xbee module. An addition to the assignment is getting our network to interact with the data stream another groups network–there are a total of four in the class.

It was helpful for us to draw out some of our initial ideas on a dry erase board. The ideas ranged from wearables to modeling distortions in space-time. In the end we settled on creating spirit animal that each member of the group will bring with them during their day-to-day interactions at ITP. The critter, constructed from soft, laser cut material, will include mood input; a sensor ( flex, touch or otherwise ) that once activated will display the critter’s individual mood on head-mounted LED “eye lights.” The individual mood will also be broadcasted of “telekeneticized” out to the whole group of spirit animals to establish a collective mood, that will affect the brightness of an additional LED around the navel area of the critter. This allows the human counterpart to visibly determine the mood of his/her critter, as well as the mood of the whole.

The broadcasted repeated numbers 1-4 are used to read a response from each of four critters in turn, after which a collective mood level is established in the following function: (a1+a2+a3+a4)/ 4 = collective mood. This function is computed by all animals. The cumulative count works in a way that each number is a time stamp instigates larger mood swings throughout throughout the life cycles of these creatures, introducing new variables that might present mood challenges.

Here are some of the sketches posted on YouJeoung and James’s blogs:
Sketches 1
Sketches 2

The idea of Xbee critters is loosely inspired by the concept of dæmons presented in the novel “The Golden Compass,” by Phillip Pullman. Critters are essentially Dæmons 2.0 with the ability, through the magic of Collaborative Mesh Networking, to send their mood out to the collective.

Synopsis:

“The first book in the series, The Golden Compass / Northern Lights (confused?) introduces readers to the world of Lyra Belacqua - a precocious orphan who roams the streets of an Oxford parallel to our own. Lyra’s universe is similar to our’s, but different in many ways - not least in the existance of daemons, shape-shifting animals who represent a human’s soul. The nature of daemons is integral to the plot of His Dark Materials. ”

http://www.bridgetothestars.net/index.php?d=trilogy

Quotes from text:

“Lyra and her dæmon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.”

“‘Oh, Pan, dear, I can’t go on! I’m so frightened ? and so tired ? all this way, and I’m scared to death! I wish it were someone else instead of me, I do honestly.’”

“‘Why do they do these things to children, Pan? Do they all hate children so much that they want to tear them apart like this? Why do they do it?’”

Keith Conway and I are attempting to get two Xbee radios communicating wireless in a game of Rock Paper Scissors. Initial handshake is working. Check out the video.

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Eric Beug and I hooked up the Xbee radios for programming the not-so-easy way, by dismembering an Arduino and using it for power in conjunction with breadboard, capacitors and voltage regulators to connect to a computer via USB. Tom Igoes little Processing Terminal emulator enabled us to type some basic commands to it to set network IDs. We eventually had two of them talking backing forth in an exercise where potentiometers were used to control the brightness of an LED over wireless.

For the first assignment Eric Beug and I have built a computer keyboard entirely from scrap in the ITP shop. The keys are cardboard, glued to springy metal contacts, then secured to a wooden base. A chip called at Ipac is used to convert the key triggers into ASCII values. Some of these values were incorrect, so we built a simple Max patch to correct them. The end result offers limited functionality with typing in a text editor, is extremely quite, and uses a very small foot print on the desk space.