Check out the demo here: Techcrumbs.org

Problem: This past weekend, the UN reported the 7 billionth person was born on earth. In about 200 years, we went from having 1 billion people on our planet to 7 billion. You might think that space is a problem, but you would be wrong. We have plenty of space, especially since the current human migration trend is toward super dense cities. The greater issue with so many people living on this planet is resources and demands on them. South Asia, South America, and Africa are all enjoying varying degrees of growth. This need for resources puts disastrous pressure on the environment and availability of water and food.

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1. Document a contentious public event with a mobile device

Assignment: Socket exercise: communicating in realtime. I will give you a game platform and the protocols to log in and communicate with it. Make a client to log in and play. Work in Processing, Flash, Arduino or whatever environment is comfortable to you.  (continue reading…)

The team Zane Brzezinski, Seth Hamlin and I constructed a device that when you put on a wrist cuff, and play with a rubix cube, it alters a processing sketch. The processing sketch is a mimim visualization that plays tones (mp3′s) orchestrated by zane. The orientation of the wrist band is measured by an accelerometer which alters the volume and panning of the sketch. The Arduino and wires were placed neatly into an ipod package.  in order to keep track of the orientation of the wrist band, we connected a three way RGB whose color values were triggered by conditionals defined by orientation thresholds. We used an old late 90s apple computer speaker to house the light and create a futuristic effect. here is a demo:

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This spring for our Physical Computer final, Zane Brzezinski, Seth Hamlin and I sought to use the varied knowledge we have accumulated this semester and attempt to realize Seth’s dream of creating a device that could change the relationship a waiter has with their customers. Call it a koolkster, call it krazykoaster, the quail, or undefined, (we could not agree on a name) the device’s intention is to record the amount of sips, the size of the sips, the number of drinks, and eventually emptiness of a drink that is placed on its platform. Consequently, due to the fear of creating an elaborate scale, we sought to take this data and make it into a drinking game. Here is the evolution of our device.

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i’ve got to say, making sounds out of that little speaker was ridiculously fun. as was moving a servo.  i think it’s time to think of making very fun r2d2 like bleeps for my next project.