Almost Two years later…

Almost two years after my last post in February 2011, I have decided to revive this blog.

Since New York I have been keeping myself busy working in the industry, pumping out one web project after the other.

While gaining invaluable professional work experience in multiple commercial projects of different types and scopes, I still neglect my experimental, interactive work.

By constantly keeping at least one eye on the NUIgroup community, I noticed a well paced development in just three years, when it comes to building DIY mt devices.

Despite familiar techniques like FTIR, DSI, DI, LLP etc. still being around and popular, building set ups utilizing photo transistor matrices becomes seemingly more trendy.

That very approach caught my attention, since it tackles one of the main annoyances I experienced, dealing with an optical mt setup including a projector. Even eliminating

the need for a projector by swapping it for a LCD matrix, still requires a minimum distance between camera and the backside of the display-surface.

By using photo transistors instead of camera and projector or LCD matrix, a DIY mt setup could possibly shrink to an estimated height of something about 2Inch.

Now that’s pretty cool.

However, digging just a little deeper I quickly realized, that there’s quite a bit of electronics and C language brushing-up work to do.

But that’s ok,  since me aiming for a more transparent publishing of learning curves, I should be able to post more frequently at the same time 🙂

My next post shall contain a sketch of my proof of concept.

mfg gabor

Filed under: Arduino Wiring, Thoughts, Visual Diary

Flash, Arduino & Parallax Ping

Hiya,

initially i have planned to realize the art project i was writing in my previous post about, in C++ Open Frameworks. Since I had some trouble though getting the range finder data into OF i have settled for Flash which worked out straight away using a flash’s binary socket and a custom written java proxy server by James Alliban. There are still some performance issues i believe that need to be fixed as well as sudden jumps in range values, which i still need pin point down. Anyways…here’s the result.

Gabor

Filed under: Arduino Wiring

Arduino & Parallax Ping Range Finder

Hi there,

it has been months since my last blog post and now I intend to pick it up again.

In the course of an interactive art project I finally found a good excuse to get my fingers onto the Arduino Mega I’ve bought last year.

Idea is ( nothing ground breaking and surely nothing that hasn’t been seen before ) to creating an interactive wall projection. Projected elements ( words ) will be reacting according to two sensor inputs. The first is based on a range approximation through the very well known  Ping ( Ultra Sonic ) Range finder from Parallax,  which will be used to scale elements up and down in relation to the distance of the nearest person. The second will be a live camera feed that will be used to detect edges of people moving in front of the projection. Projected elements will be collision tested against those edges in order to interact with elements on a very basic level. So far so good.

Wiring the range finder to the Arduino is straight forward and can be done in no time. Arduino.cc supplies very comprehensive material.

I’ve simply uploaded David A. Mellis’s Arduino sketch onto the controller and could straight away see the results being printed into the serial monitor. Easy as. Make sure your baud rate is set correctly.

Filed under: Arduino Wiring