BarCampNYC4 was hosted by ITP on May 30-31st. It was a great event – I’d highly recommend going to another one.

I did a presentation titled “Using openFrameworks for iPhone App Development” which I think went well, although it was quite dense. Can’t be helped, I suppose. The walk-through of getting set up with openFrameworks has been previously posted, and is also available on ITPedia. Below is an embedded video of the presentation thanks to Mark B… and New Work City. (more…)

Following up on the initial post about the brauswitch – the eyebrow activated headband switch. Here is some video with a simple application demonstrating it’s use. There are separate switches for both the left and right sides. The simple Arduino code listed below will indicate if the left, right or both sides have been activated. A Processing sketch reads the serial output of the device and plays a variety of sound samples.

There is something really nice about the amplification of a small facial movement and the larger audio/visual response of the sketch. It’s also nice to interact in a handsfree way. Oh! Fun. Code after the video. (more…)

Assignment 2(b):

Make an app that allows you to get a single pixel color from live video and fill a rectangle with that color.

I’ve done similar things countless times in Processing (and Director before that), so I used this as an opportunity to dive into openFrameworks. I have been building up my experience of coding with C++ through working with Golden Cheetah and I can finally (sort-of) read the syntax of the code comfortably. I’m also getting used to working in Xcode.

Anyway, here is the result of the quick sketch of the app. I still need to check over my coding conventions to make sure that I’m not doing anything really inefficient, but this works for now. I feel like I’m starting over again…which is fine.

Here is the application (os x) and source code (xcode project, for use with oF v0.05).

Spent most of the day at Tymm’s house, pretending to participate in 4-in-4, but mostly drinking coffee and watching videos. I did eventually get around to tinkering with my new Meggy Jr RGB from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. The Meggy is a pixel game platform built around a vivid 8×8 LED matrix running an Arduino compatible ATMega168. EMSL has also released a simple to use library for managing the display, buttons and speaker. It’s really a great kit.

I decided to ignore all the nice easy stuff (more…)

(this is an initial report for a longer post)

in conducting field research for the CycleSense bicycle proximity sensor i’m looking to gather data about actual proximity events while riding and to correlate these events with video documentation and personal annotation from the test subject…probably just me.

to that end, i’ve worked on rigging up a data logging solution for the sensor package. there was some information on using bluetooth enabled mobile phones as a storage device, communicating to a bluetooth module such the blueSMiRF attached to a microcontroller. in this case, an ultrasonic rangefinder is read by an Arduino which sends the range values through the blueSMiRF to a nokia phone. (more…)

Jody and I created this in-camera piece during class for 2×2. We’ve had to move to the Moon in the next hundred years and the Earth becomes uninhabitable. This is a nostalgic look back at a slice of New York City (more…)

years ago we used to joke that the small microphone at the top of some apple monitors (beige powerPC era) was a stress sensor and would allow the computer to detect when you were getting frustrated or were under a deadline and would then misbehave to spite you.

when the macbooks added the isight camera built-in to the display bezel it was like deja vu, “all over again”.

i’ve always been somewhat wary of the camera, specifically that it may be on despite not indicating as such. last night, as i walked past the computer, my fears were confirmed..as show in the below video:

The tracking is done in Processing, (more…)

Commuting. I really want to permanently install a cheap digital camera on my handlebars with a remote swtich somewhere so I could take really quick pics while I ride…I see a lot of weird stuff every day…

I got to play with a USB microscope today. The device is pretty simple, and the focus control was difficult to dial in, but the results were fun. There’s something about scale…even the mundane is intriguing when we see it in a novel way and this certainly qualifies.

Here are some pics: (more…)