Flows and interaction

Reading about support for mobile social interaction or social icebreakers I was inspired to this idea of a projector based system which would project information in front of you. The user would be presented with three or more possible flows or directions to moving each of which would expose different types of information to the user.   if the user followed a particular branch that Branch might then split up again into more detailed information.
The idea would be that if two users were exhibiting interest in the same kind of subject than they might be directed to collide with each other and then over the subject might discover they have some interest in common.

File this under experiments to do when I had a near infinite number of projectors on hand

Data outage

I came in this morning to find that the server had crashed ( out of memory ) over the weekend. I've restarted the server.

We now have the feed back on the paper ( I must finish reading ).

On the 'if I had to build a carpet again' pile

http://www.glowsafe.com/e-shop/index.php?cPath=39_41

For that Tron effect.

works mostly on clothing. I wonder what voltage ?

+44 (0) 870 199 8524

New idea of the day

On train to meeting had an itreasing thought about how to compute more about position of amibent displays.

Then had good idea about using the big screen. Basically put something up on the big screen and project something on the floor and measure how often people 'see' it. Do floor and wall displays work equally attractive. Big advantage of this kind of experiment is don't have to get the motion detection stuff working to make it an experiment.

The other idea is to run the does an ambient display make a difference by visualising the cookies which are used by people to track you. See if visualising this changes peoples security behaviours. Might be another persuasive type paper. Must do it quick before big display gets used.

Transparent computing

A voice emanating from the stairs. I once did a program for Lucy Kimble that took her speaking digits and had it counting down from 1000000 in a station. If you heard voices in the stairs perhaps you might turn to investigate?

I once wanted to use speech synthesis and recognition to make verbal bandwidth, one computer would talk to another, sending bytes by speaking them and the other listening converting back to binary. The idea was to have a very slow network connection between to networks were you could hear the flow of information, so you could listen to the internet. Might be able to get reasonable bandwidth by having a number of speaking tubes.

More on cursed research and a new direction.

The projector bulb arrived but I noticed that the building was empty - its half term and the building looks very quite. 

I've contacted someone to help with another building and will look at library again. 

chatting with Paul he felt there was a good research grant looking at how buildings and ambient displays interact and this could be a good line of research for a proposal. This would make a good research arc for me. Worth putting a proposal in ( need a couple of pilot papers first). 

Meanwhile had an interesting idea about measuring subtended angle - the more directly facing a display is the more likely you are to see it.. can we measure this does it say much. Could combine with complexity of interface. 

Also had idea on bus about mapping fits law on screens - what will this look like?

thoughts about other buildings

Checked out the M.Young building ( business ) and the Library the library has only one lift/stair combination (together) and might be a good place to start. 

Paul mentioned our contact with the digilab person as an entry point.  

Basic idea would be to run experiment in other buildings both as a check and as way of running experiment early.

Its done.

19-Nov-2008 12:23:16  the time I moved the final sensor mat on the stairs. This should be getting some good 'gold' records from now on. I'm thinking of leaving the sensor in for another week of testing.

Final sensor installed

I took out the sunspot sensor and replaced it with an arduino using Firmata and processing to capture the data and post it to the central server. 

I was expecting things to take a while and for a moment had a problem with what I thought was a cable not working - but I think it was something else.  

Some conversation about new vidieo wall. 

Nexus sensor integrated.

I managed to integrate the Nexus sensor into the system - this meant simply re-loading code. The problem with this was that people kept stopping and asking me what I was doing ( I did have the floor up). 

I spent ages trying to get the think working and kept getting connection not accepted. Eventually I discovered the code had the wrong port. 

Finally I found I didn't reboot sleepless so the laptop fell asleep. 

Tommorow I'm going to replace the sunspot with a clone of the ardiuno sensor + move the second pad. 

Need to get a good process running for the update visualisation. 

News on the arduinio ethernet stuff.

Looks like the very nice ethernet shield from Nuelectronics won't run the standard Arduino ethernet libraries from Ardunio central. It does have it's own library which is a little tricky. 

The alternative is to buy the 'offical' ardunio sheild from Smart Projects in Italy. ( 31 Euro - so about 25 pounds plus postage against about 13 plus for a simpler programming experiance. 

I wish they would make the whole thing a bit more explicit. 

I'm thinking of replacing the sunspot with the remote processing/Firmata and running the code hot to the server ( which I got working with sensor 3 today). 

There is also anouther board based on Xport - pricy, and you can't buy it ready made and you have to buy the bits seperatly BUT it does have DHCP working out of the box ( + own mac address). 

I found the make controller  which is a UBS/Ethernet with more memory and DHCP. The interface to the outside world is via OSC (yum) and you cam programming it. Looks to be based on the ARM chip. About £68 + shipping from the US.  So not so bad. Looks very simple to interface to as well. Quite close to my ideal machine in many ways.  Has in built eithernet but no simple digital in(s) only analogue.

more ethernet sensors

PIC MAXI-WEB Server (60 proper dhcp)

Arduino shieild

Floor stickies and more

I think I have a mild cold or flu. Had bad head ache this mornining so didn't stop off to get the wire for the third footfall sensor. Did spend most of the morning doing a review of a nice paper for Chi. 

Did discover I could use aurdio as ethernet device. Down side is it needs a static IP address - which can be organised but is a pain not to have DHCP.

Lent Tsous spair Aurdio for a week or two to experiment with, but might use it to replace the mac-mini in the floor. 

Afternoon was spent bringing Tasous and supervisors Cat/Theo up to date with developments of the projector. Tasous has got to grips with my image processing code. We had a lot of nice ideas of possible interfaces. Everyone seems happy with Putham deadline followed by children and learning paper deadline in Jan. 

Netiom sensor

Well I managed to find the 7805 Voltage regulator and today (despite terrible headache) managed to get the electronics for the third sensor working. 

For some strange reason I'm getting strange signals popping out from the sensor (not timed not triggered not sure why.

 

With the PC from home and more wire I should get the server working in the meeting room on the far side of the building. With this I can begin upgrading the network to start talking directly to the main machine and so get the visualisations working