Second day of prototyping (Pictures)

Mia, Pinar, Josefin working with the prototype

Inside the box

Decoration of the Beatbox (This also works as some form of guidance)

The different RFID tags (Ball missing)

Second day of prototyping

Additions
Because the light censor had worked surprisingly well we continued with that approach and with the hope of incorporate to different sounds depending on how far the hand would be from the censor (see illustration). We then talked about how we should make the prototype, materials and so on.

We all agreed that it should be a simple/sleek design with as little as possible of the electronics showing. We decided that coding the prototype was a one (wo)man job. David signed up for the job and worked with the code while the rest of us worked with the prototype. Fortunately we found a box matching just the way we wanted the prototype and the girls pretty soon made a functional prototype (still lacking the code though). Christoffer and I thought of the idea of changing instruments. With RFID tags we could realize that and we started decorate the tags so the tags reflected the different instrument (more or less, see picture below). We also started implementing this with our own InstrumentSelector class in java.

Sound Problems
David dropped working with sound (wave) in Java due to problems mentioned from the first day and some other unknown problems. He started using midi instead.

When we started testing the prototype it’s was hard to distinguish “high” and “low” movements from each other because of two reasons. First of all when removing the hand after a “low” movement the light censor value would increase until it reached a normal state and by doing so passing the “high” value thereby triggering both the “low” sound and the “high” sound. Second of all, due the different light sources, if you held the hand slightly to one sides of the prototype the amount of light being removed would correspond to the amount of light being removed if you held the hand in the “high” position thus triggering the “high” sound. We tried solving this in different ways but nothing helped (I later realised that the best way of solving this problem was to have a proximity censor so that the sound would only be played when this censor also was triggered). We ended up skipping the idea of two different sounds and just went for one sound.

The RFID tags worked as planned, but it wasn’t as easy to change instrument on run-time as predicted. David worked for this for quite some time but time was running late and the group had courses to follow or assignments to make.

Redesign
Christoffer and I had no plans so we decided to look at the code to see if there was some solution to the problem. I took a second look on sound in Java and Christoffer looked at the censor part. This ended in a complete redesign of the code. Christoffer managed to sort the events so a sound wouldn’t be played every time there was the slightest movement, but only when big changes in light occurred. I had sound working on my laptop and we seemed confident that the hours given Monday was enough to make it all play together.

First day of prototyping

The group quickly found together because we had worked together the week before when looking at phidgets for the first time (David joined) We started out brainstorming on all ideas we had (possible and impossible).

Different ideas
The first round of brainstorm resulted in these ideas:

Color Table
A table that changes color depending on what you put on it or how long it’s been there. This could be realized with either temperature censor (a hot cop of coffee vs. a cold glass of milk) or RFID tags and different LED lights. A variation of this could be a floor with different lighting, like in Michael Jackson – Billie Jean music video

Automatic typewriter
Another idea was an automatic typewriter that could do ASCII-Art or print something from a computer. That would mean that all keys should be connected to different motors which would mean a lot of motors so that idea was quickly dropped.

Ball game
A third idea was a sort of game where 2 players had a ball each. These two would then be connected to each other (by Bluetooth or similar) and then be pressing different places on the ball the two players could then play some sort of game.

None of the ideas seemed to be the perfect one for the group, either it was to big a project for at prototype or only a minority of the group liked the idea. It seemed that because we hadn’t any constraints it’s was actually hard to find ideas. Therefore we try to agree on some things that we all wanted the prototype to have and thereby setting some constraints for us self.

Constraints
We agreed that (even though it could be fun) a toy for kids would be overkill because they have there imagination (and we only have the reality… ) and maybe wouldn’t need all kinds of electronic. It could on the other hand be great to make a game for grown ups. Another thing we all agreed on was that the prototype either should be some sort of furniture or something you would be able to take with you, thus not an installation. We all wanted something with interaction (Mia was pretty keen on getting something with motors) and light or sound. A common interest was also to control something in an alternative way. For example had Christoffer seen a harp made of water beams that you could play on.

Brainstorm (again)
We tried brainstorming again which resulted in different variations of the ball game but also an idea of taking an punch bag and making it play a sound each time you hit it (like "Auch") or maybe making a game of it so you had to hit in the right combination. This idea changed so you could use the punch bag to play music on (drums for example). The alternative way of playing drums combined with the water harp ended up in the idea of playing drums in the air with help of either proximity censors or sonar censors. We all liked the idea of playing something without actually seeing what made the music play. We named the prototype "BeatBox". The "Beat" in BeatBox is both from beating the punch bag (where the idea derived from) and a drum beat.

The proto-prototype
After that Mia, Josefin, David and I tested the idea, but because we didn't have a proximity censor we used a light censor instead. We placed this in a cup to avoid to much light from the sides. Pretty fast we got it working and it seemed it could be possible to make a working prototype with the time we had available. Only problem was that due to the amount of events the light censor produced every time you moved your hand, the computer couldn't keep of with playing the same amount of sounds. David started working on a solution to that problem, and the rest of us went home.

Phidgets, first hand on

Today we got introduced to the phidgets. I’ve never programmed anything other than software so I was exited to work phidgets. Christoffer and I teamed up (we had been in a group last week) and soon Mia, Josefin and Pinar joined. The Phidget was surprisingly easy to get started with and we played with the motors and some form of proximity censor. The group seemed to work pretty good together booth playing and exploring the opportunities available. We tried to make a small car out of two motors and some disposable cardboard cups. Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures of this, but it worked fairly good. Well it's gonna be exciting to work with the next couple of weeks

A Digital Experince

Todays lecture made me think of the site Digital Experience by CAVI, the Centre for Advanced Visualization and Interaction at Aarhus University. It's a very cool site with a lot of interaction design and other neat stuff.