Setting on the hallway_movie

Hiding sensors

Finally we used five proximity sensors for each object. Can you find sensors in the seeting pictures? I saw many people who wanted to find sensors that trigger the movements of objects.
We tried to hide sensors people not to fine them easily.
But here, I open the secret!

This one is for a bag.


This one is for a book.


This one is for pencils.


This one is for a cup.


And we hided a sensor for a box in the book.

Setting on the hallway

The movement of a cup

Midterm | a cup

After we didn't make a tissue box, we were looking for other items and Chris found a cup. The mechanism of this cup was really simple, but the movement of a straw was awesome! He used a screw to fix a servo on the bottom of the cup because of this screw whenever the straw moved, the cup moved.

Midterm | a tissue box

I wanted to make a tissue box using a computer fan. So we tried to attach a fan the bottom of a tissue box, and make air to move tissues. When we tried the fan without a box, it had enough power to move the tissues, but when we put on the box on the fan, there wasn't enough airflow. With so much left to do we decided to pay more attention to other items.

Inside of the box


The computer fan

The movement of boxie

Midterm | a box

Chris found a big metal box on the road and we decided to use it as one of our objects. He used two servo motors to open the cover but there were not enough power to open it even though we expected a big movement. But it made a little movement and a sound as if there was someone in the box. So people were often scared to the box.

The movement of pencils

The movement of pencils


Pencils' noise

Midterm | pencils

David came with ideas about pencils. I attatched a pager motor to each pencil. We used three pencils with pager motors to make pencils that were in a pencil holder move. When pencils were vibrating, they made much louder noise with a pencil holder than we expected. To reduce the noise, we cover the inside of a pencil holder with soft material. Finally pencils could make softer sound as if they were talking.
Initially when I attached motors to the pencils,I used regular wires, but these presented a big obstacle in the way og vibrating the pencils. So we borrowed tiny wires from Tim and it helped to make the pencils move.

The movement of baggie

Midterm | a bag

Baggie!

Our second object was a bag. We were trying to make bag turn and move like a mouse. Chris built a base box to hide one servo. And he put the other servo in the bag. Also to close the mouse of the bag, he used a rubber band. This process was more complicated than we expected. But finally we could get a satisfied movement form the bag.



Inside the bag



Under the bag ( inside the box)

The movement of bookie

Midterm | a book

Bookie!

Initially, we wanted to make a book talk!
We used one servo motor open and close a fake book.
This book was from Chris. We tried to use a pot and an IR sensor as an analog input but finally we used a proximity sensor to get analog values. Because a proximity sensor could perceive loger distance and get more exact values than an IR sensor.

Focusing on the movement

Our purpose of this project is "giving new personallity to the everyday objects." We were tring to figure out various ways to make them act as if they are alive. We were thinking about sounds, and movement. At the same time we chose very ordinary objects such as pencils, a bag, a cup etc. We had many different kinds of ideas about the reactions of objects to people, but finally we decided to focus on the movements of them because we thought un expected movements from the objects should be much stronger than any other traits.

Developing Ideas

Book:
IR sensor
3 ft. - one up and down, random time delay 1.5-3 secs, up and down again
2 ft. - larger up and down random every .5-1 sec
1 ft. - largest up and down random every 20 mili - .2 sec, drunk laugh, after 5 secs of being close it vomits (green LEDs), panting, and passes out

Bag:
ultrasonic sensor
6 ft - giggle
4 ft - move away slightly, giggle more
2 ft - coy , move away totally (125 degrees)
touch/lift - screams! (looking under dress)

Pencils:
IR sensor
3 ft. - small chatter
1.75 ft. - more chatter, sounding like angry or sneaky
.5 ft. - gone crazy, jumping everywhere, loud party

Ideas for a midterm

Group Members: Chris, David and myself

When we use interactive devices, there are always expected situations and the purposes of interactions. For example, when we use vending machine, the expected situation is that if you put the money, push the button, finally the machine will give you a drink. And the purpose that you start interacting with a machine is to get a drink.
But we thought that there could be different kind of interactivities with objects. If we trigger some interactivities without learned and decided actions and special purposes, we can have new experiences. And the situation that has unexpected interactivities can be very interesting. For instance, trash cans can tremble when we walk beside them, and the reactions of these trash cans can make interactivities with other objects such as papers, boxes, chairs, bags etc. In this situation, we can involve the interactivity or we can observe the unusual interactions among the objects that are installed in an environment.
Finally, we will make a special situation that you can experience unusual interactivities. We will install some devices to make objects react to people or other objects.



**David's first meeting note

Although we have some good ideas that would easily fulfill the requirements of the mid-term project assignment (Chris’ box idea, jug orchestra, etc) we decided it was of greatest value for ourselves and the project to take a more ground-up approach to the construction of the concept and production of the final piece. We described several ideas centered around a universal theme such as social protest, environmental effects and sustainability, economic diversity, and __ - all while considering uses of interactivity for the final “device”. We are all fairly confident in the basic electronics in PComp class and after discussing our individual skill sets (Chris: physical construction/production, EJ: graphic and movement design, David: interface design and development) and found we are all very interested in experimenting with new/different sensors along with passive interaction in an installation environment. The meeting ended with ideas surrounding the creation of several autonomous devices triggered by an unknowing user entering into a space, inadvertently triggering sensors that, in-turn, trigger other devices. The anthropomorphic objects considered were trash cans, lamps, cell phones, boxes, and plants. All objects discussed would be blended into the environment, and the non-technical aspect of the objects would create a much more approachable interaction for the user, causing a very pleasant experience. Although a learning curve would be needed for interaction, this would also be seen as comical and not intimidating.

Options for user and device interaction in environment:

- objects that are having conversation between each other, and user “interrupts” this conversation
- objects lay dormant in their setting until being triggered by the user, which then trigger other devices using other sensor/sensory inputs
- objects in conversation that eventually “ignore” the user
- pre-determined scenes randomly generated
- objects being usable only with a single user
- objects requiring multiple users
- objects laying dormant only when in user(s)’ presence, “acting” when in solidarity
- linear narrative scene(s) between user and object(s)
- non-linear scenes created by device and user interaction