Jim Alexander | Blog

For my final project in Physical Computing, I got to choose what I wanted to work with, so I decided to play around with the WiiFlash server and AS3 class and the Papervision 3D class. I wanted to make a painting application using the Wiimote after seeing some of the presentations on it at FITC. I ended up letting the user paint a sphere made in Papervision 2.0, which let me make an interactive material for the sphere allowing the user to manipulate the Bitmap data.

The Wii Nunchuck controlled the movement of the sphere, with the joystick controlling the rotation and the C and Z buttons zooming in and out on the sphere. The Wiimote controlled the painting with the IR sensor and the A button, with the Directional Pad controlling the color selection. I used the Adobe Kuler API to give the user a selection from the top rated color combinations on Kuler.

I used the Arduino to power the IR LEDs that the Wiimote used for detection. It was a simple use of the Arduino, but it made it convenient to power the LEDs using the computer’s USB port. I enjoyed working with WiiFlash, but I think that I still prefer to create my own physical user interfaces for a more customized experience.

When I went to FITC in Toronto, I happened to pick up a flier from Fuel Industries that gives you the middle finger and says “I QUIT!” I liked it, and I decided to make the middle finger move with a servo motor connected to an Arduino. The finger is controlled with a Wii Nunchuck hooked up to one of Todbot’s WiiChuck Adapters. The tilt of the accelerometer in the Nunchuck moves the middle finger on the flier. It was appropriate as I did come home from FITC with a job lined up at Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

Bull Rider from Jim Alexander on Vimeo.

The idea behind project runway in my Physical Computing class is to put sensors into clothing and have them react to what the wearer is doing. After playing around with the accelerometer, I decided to look around my room for clothing that I could use for the project. I came across my bull rider costume that I wore to a halloween party two years ago, and I realized it was perfect.

I could take the serial data that I received from the three axis accelerometer and make a game that required someone wearing the bull rider costume to jump faster and faster as their time is tracked. Bull riding, the sport, requires the rider to stay on for at least 8 seconds, so I wanted to keep that same concept going for my game.

The arduino board, with the accelerometer attached, is not very pretty to look at. So how can I hide it from view and have it still be comfortable to wear? I will simply hide it in my cowboy hat; there is plenty of room in there to make it comfortable.

Joe Pietruch, the one other New Media guy in my class, jumped on board the project because he loved the idea. After more brainstorming, we decided that there should be a handle near the bull’s head that the bull rider must hold onto throughout the game. We thought about using the homemade capacitor that I blogged about earlier, but we found that the serial data we got from it was not very development friendly. Joe suggested that we make a switch using two pieces of aluminum foil, and we found that it worked great and was very responsive. That was when another idea struck, I could take a hand grip exerciser and make that into our switch, therefore adding another level of challenge to our game.

The hand grip functions just like a switch, when it is open we set the digital pin to low, when it is closed we set the digital pin to high. We are also connecting a pushbutton to the hand grip as a reset button, so that the user can restart the game after they get a game over.

Using the hand grip adds another level of difficulty as the user will have to resist the fatigue from holding the grip closed and from constantly jumping up and down. The game is being developed in Adobe Flash using Actionscript 3.0, which is a much better game development platform than Processing. The idea is that when the user closes the grip, the game starts and they must jump up and down according to what the Flash game tells them. If the user either loosens the grip or stops jumping, the game is over.

I got the capacitive sensor working from class, I used 4 100 Ohm resistors and some aluminum foil. It is set up to send serial data to the Arduino serial monitor.

By the way I found out what was wrong with my protoshield, there was a solder bridge that was causing problems with the TX and RX pins, which transfer the serial data. I fixed the solder bridge, now my protoshield is back in action.

This quarter I am taking a class called Physical Computing with W. Michelle Harris. I was really happy when I found out about the course, as I already owned an Arduino and the book Making Things Talk by Tom Igoe.

For Project 1 we had to experiment with LED lights, and I had four lights set up, red, green, and blue (I had two red LEDs as they were not as bright as the other two) as an RGB color mixer. I had then cycle through different colors with the press of a button, but it was not working properly as I was having problems with my protoshield. To resolve this, I went out and bought a large breadboard and got my Arduino all set up with it and it works great. I will resolve my issues with the protoshield later.

After purchasing a new breadboard, I decided to add more functionality to my RGB lights by controlling their brightness with potentiometers. I took pictures of my new setup:

I put the four LED lights inside of a ping pong ball filled with portions of a dryer sheet and white plastic bag to diffuse the lights and make them appear as a solid color.

I am really happy with the way it turned out, I altered code that I found on the Arduino website to get the results that I wanted.

I also secured my Arduino to the breadboard using a rubber band and attached the battery power supply using Velcro to make it easy to remove yet secure when I want it to be.

I recently purchased an Arduino, which is a microcontroller that has been developed off of the Processing language. I experimented with Processing for my Virtual Entertainment class with Jason Arena, and I really like what the language is capable of. I have always wanted to make artwork that people can view in galleries, and I saw the potential of Arduino and Processing to bring me closer to doing so.

Processing is a great language for visualizing data, and if I hope to make an interactive art installation that people can physically participate in. I actually set this experimentation up as my project for Experimental New Media this quarter.

New Media Team Project started with the beginning of winter quarter, and I have been put into the Silverlight group. We are learning and implementing Microsoft Silverlight, which is a browser plugin that Microsoft has been developing to give Adobe Flash some competition.

Our group has named ourselves Xamlhouse, a play off of the movie Animal House and the XAML script that runs the graphic side of Silverlight. So far the project has been quite interesting, and getting used to Microsoft’s Expression Suite has been tough. The options in comparison to Adobes products are very limited, making the software seem primitive. You can see what the Xamlhouse Team is up to at our blog.

I have been experimenting with processing for my first project in Virtual Entertainment. I ended up creating a piece that pulls colors and brightness from an image and turns the data into bezier curves that end up looking like banners in a 3D space. The project can be viewed here. Here are a few image samples I saved:



 Our class will be putting print samples of our work up in building 7 of RIT. 

The website for LHT USA is complete, as the domain has been transferred over to the virtual dedicated hosting that we bought through GoDaddy. LHT USA is a Rochester, NY company that promotes diversity within company workforces and handles the hiring process for many companies. The job listings page uses the CATS Applicant Tracking System, which provides an extensive open source back end system for companies to track applicants and store resumes. The career portal that they provide allows a webmaster such as myself to edit the listings right into the HTML page.