[Alex Weber] put together a motorized drawing machine painting 2d Vector Graphics on his office’s glasses.
An automatic scribbling machine sounds less than useful, admittedly, but it’s really just the style of line created by this motorized drawing machine. It’s reminiscent of ASCII art, in which heavier characters are used to create darker tones; in this case, the more jiggle added to the drawing platform, the more ink is put on the drawing surface. It’s kind of mesmerizing.
Stuart and I wanted to design a project that would be a good introduction to upcycling electronics, robotics, arduino, art with maths/code. We came up with a drawing robot based on an old floppy drive.
[Tecnochicken] has challeneged his arduino and robotic skills in developing a tree-climbing robot based on a L298 H-Bridge Motor Driver and some design time in Sketchup.
After I got comfortable programming and building with an Arduino, I decided to build a robot. I did not have any particular type in mind, so I wracked my brain (and the internet) for cool robot ideas. Eventually, somehow the idea popped into my head to build a robot that could climb trees. At first I dismissed the idea as beyond my skill level, but after further thought, and some time in Sketchup, I decided to take a shot at the challenge.
A beautiful project by [Leigh Davis]. It is a brilliant proof of how Arduino fits into virtually any sphere of thought and is the shortest path for a creator realizing his idea in reality.
He writes:
I began the first few days by developing a stand alone application build in MaxMSP that understands the notes that a play on my (recently purchased second-hand) flute. I set the range from low C right up to the 3rd octave D. Each note of the chromatic scale triggers a bang, which is coloured uniquely to the other notes bang messages.
The bang message then sets the corresponding color to the display screen on the application. Which will in turn send a signal to the arduino to dispense the corresponding oil color on water according to the different notes. (Something like a physical Milkdrop!)He further plans to control different LEDs, motors and the likes using the Rayne application.
[Steve Hoefer] shared an interesting solution for visually impaired people.
It measures the distance to things and translates that into pressure on the wrist.[...] It’s wrist mounted and senses objects from about 1 inch (2 cm) to 10 feet (3.5m). It has generally fast response time (fractions of a second) to quickly navigate complex environments.
It’s not the first time we see Arduino used for custom solutions to navigate a room and / or enviroment, replacing the sight (above all, you’ll remember the [Bat Googles] project from USI and [Halo], the winner project of Humana competition).
“Tacit”, that’s how’s called this cool project, is the first in moving the sensitive response area of the device from the head (closed to the ears) to wrists (closed to the hands). Steve, whom its first prototype was conceived has an headband like the two projects above, moved its device to the wrist for several reasons
The headband was a great first test, and it did work, but it had two fatal flaws:
1) The most dangerous obstacles are not at head level. Furniture and most of the other things that can be tripped over and stubbed on are waist level or lower.
2) Vibrating motors stuck on your skull will drive you insane quickly.
In addition it would be a challenge to disguise it as anything but some mad-science-looking headband, and blind people do care how they look.
Tacit is wonderfully referenced and it’s realeased in CC-NC-SA
[Paul Ferragout] realized a strange printer, with an incorporated program to print any image using a time-based algorithm. According to the grey value of a pixel on an image, the felt pen remains in contact with the blotting paper for relative periods of time.
The Arduino-controlled Time Print Machine uses an algorithm to “paint” images — portraits, still lives, you name it — out of nothing but splotches of ink. Equipped with a felt pen and blotting paper, it works like a CNC-milling machine. Program the machine to render a digital image, and the pen starts stabbing at the paper, varying the amount of time it spends on each dot according to the gray value of the respective pixel; the more time allotted, the more the ink bleeds, and the thicker the dot.
The resulting images can take up to 34 hours to print and look like bad photocopies, each totally unique. We’re not sure whether to think of the Time Print Machine as the world’s least-efficient printer or the world’s most-efficient Pointillist painter. The one thing we know is this: The machine is weirdly hypnotic. We could watch that thing drop ink all afternoon
Barcelona-based IAAC school is hosting a summer school (in Barcelona and Mumbay). The theme of this year’s course is creating an urban tool of a networked city based on a new informational layer.
What happens if we think Urbanism and Energy through a new informational layer added in our cities?
[Alan Rorie] developed The Simple Act of Making a Mark, an installation about abstracting the creative process: The machine begins by looking at what is placed before it and detects patterns within it. The machine then traces those subtle patterns, amplifying and solidifying them until generative patterns emerge autonomously.
Hypnotic installation from David Bowen representing *real* waves.
[...] Tele-Present Water installation draws information from the intensity and movement of the water in a remote location. Wave data is collected in real-time from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data buoy station 46075 Shumagin Islands Alaska. The wave intensity and frequency is scaled and transferred to the mechanical grid structure resulting in a simulation of the physical effects caused by the movement of water from this distant location. The installation uses MAX/MSP to drive an Arduino mega running servo firmata. It uses 11 x 24volt dc motors with drivers for the movement.
Arduino is driving a huge amount of pen nibs in a wearable computing fashion project by John Nussey and Steven Tai .
In the above video and gallery, you can see the remarkable construction of the originally-named Pen Nib Dress, a shiny, pointy stunning garment created by creative technologist John Nussey and Central St. Martins Womenswear student Steven Tai for his final degree show.
The two blended their creative and technical talents to create an A-line dress which uses moveable, vibrating pen nibs as an alternative to sequins or beading. [...] The pair decided to use the tiny motors used to make mobile phones vibrate to animate the nibs — “they’re cheap and low-power”, says Nussey — and link these up in rows of nibs with a transistor, acting as a switch, at the end of each row. “This really cut the work down”, said Nussey, as the pair were working against Tai’s degree show deadline, “meaning we didn’t have 795 nibs to individually wire, but 42 rows. It can always be upgraded to have each motor working independently.”
These rows can be switched on and off by an arduino, and subsequently programmed and sequenced. The whole lot is powered by a rechargeable lithium battery, “so it doesn’t have to be plugged in”, explains Nussey — attachment to the wall not being the hottest look when heading down the catwalk.
