PComp

The Exploding Twit Bird: Twitter Blows Up a Bird

Twitter blows up a bird. By mapping the recent tweet frequency around a topic to the size of a bird's body, the Exploding Twit Bird raises questions around the time that we spend discussing different topics in social media.

This project was implemented by pairing Arduino, PHP, Processing and an AC Triac relay to control the air compressor. By tweeting the term @explodingtwit and a search term, and then pressing a button, the user can see the bird expand to reflect the frequency with which the term is used in the Twitterverse. In this project, I worked to create a physical visualization that was both critical in nature, but open to being used with different topics and different individuals. I find the role of social media in our lives to be a particularly interesting area to explore, particularly as services like Facebook and Twitter become ever more intwined with our lives. As these forms of media have risen, other forms, such as traditional news outlets, struggle to stay relevant and captivating in our lives. But how much tweeting is too much tweeting? When do all these little updates become white noise, and when do they become destructive in society?

For a paper discussing the project’s inspirations, implications, construction, interaction, user feedback and future developments, check out the .pdf file at http://www.kennethroraback.com/Exploding-Twit-Bird.pdf

Some Previous Blog Posts about the Exploding Twit Bird:

Last week was nothing but woes: http://yg.typepad.com/pcomp/2010/12/a-sad-week-for-the-exploding-twit-bird.html

Prototyping from the previous week: http://yg.typepad.com/pcomp/2010/12/more-prototypes-exploding-twit-bird.html

Initial prototypes and thinking around the Exploding Twit Bird: http://yg.typepad.com/pcomp/2010/11/prototyping-the-inflatabledeflatableexplodable-twitter-bird.html

Additional Links:

If you would like to view all of my blog entries, check out: http://yg.typepad.com/pcomp/kenneth-roraback/

And my introductory post is at: http://yg.typepad.com/pcomp/2010/09/whats-your-favorite-music-video-of-all-time.html

Lastly, you can check out my portfolio site at: www.kennethroraback.com

Feedback request:

As for this project, I would love to hear your ideas for how I can push it forward, other directions I can go with it, and whether you find it an effective visualization. What could make it stronger?

A sad week for the Exploding Twit Bird

This has been a sad week for the Exploding Twit Bird, but I have not given up hope!

First of all, my Arduino was having weird issues. It wasn't sensing the button correctly (rather, was sensing an always HIGH signal, which was no good. I ordered a new Arduino, and then had trouble getting it to connect (which turned out to be stupidity on my part—I just needed to reset it from Duemilanove to the Uno. That done, it worked fine!

I am still having troubles, however: My air compressor is fancy, so it requires that I set the PSI before it will turn on. To set the PSI, one must hold either the plus or minus button for a few seconds. I assumed that I could just send a HIGH signal to the transistor for a few seconds, and all would be fine. This does not work, however. The signal is not clean enough for the air compressor to recognize it as a constant signal. I know this, because the light on the air compressor keeps turning on and off, which is what happens if you hit the +/- buttons, but don't hold them for long enough. Below is video of that happening: (well, I'll add the video in once it's done uploading)

I *did* double-check that the balloon will explode. It takes a full 2-2.5 minutes, but it gets there:

I also noticed that the power button keeps getting a signal, even when the Arduino isn't (or at least, shouldn't be) sending it a signal. I'm not sure if, because I used the 30-gauge wire, it doesn't have enough insulation to prevent troubles, or what the problem is.

End decision: I need a new air compressor, and I should just manipulate the 12V power supply, directly (via a larger transistor), rather than trying to do it with little buttons. Then I can just send a single signal to power it for a certain number of seconds. I can't really use the PSI, anyway—one thing I wondered about—because balloons do not inflate to a high pressure. They just get bigger and bigger and bigger, with roughly the same PSI, until they pop. I wen to Home Depot on 23rd Street with no luck, but I'm off to Lowes in Brooklyn today! Hopefully I'll have a new, simpler air compressor in hand, when I return.

Oh, and my Interface professor thought maybe I was getting electromagnetic interference in my Arduino signal because it was too close to the air compressor. Just to be sure, I moved it a good 2 feet away:

Oh, and lastly, I'm still grappling with the ethernet shield code, but in the worst-case scenario, I'll use the firmata library and connect to Processing on my computer. 

More prototypes – Exploding Twit Bird

1. Implementation: Compressor hack

I got the air compressor in the mail, opened it up, and soldered wires to each of the three buttons used to control the pressure and on/off mechanism. Below are some photos of the hacking process, and a video of the air compressor, as I connect wires (manually) to adjust the pressure and turn the compressor on and off.

The compressor with the cover removed:

The underside (well, the top, but the underside once the cover is taken off), after I removed the screws holding the display and circuit board down.

Testing the polarity of the circuit: which contact is the positive side, and which is the negative side:

Video of the compressor:

 

2. Look and Feel Prototype: Housing for the compressor

Below are photos of the iMac G3 CPU after I attacked it with a few screwdrivers, a pick and a hammer. Seriously, I spent ages pounding out rivets to get a support platform out of the case so that the compressor would fit inside.

I wanted to send the compressor cable through one of the upper holes, but even after I cut the barrier between two of them, I still couldn't get the head through. Even at the bottom slots, I had to cut across a barrier in order to get the compressor valve through:

 

3. Implementation: Circuit to control the air compressor

I made a circuit using NPN transistors to control the circuits in the compressor controls. I just need to send a positive signal to the base of the transistors to send electricity flow to the buttons. I used pins 7, 8, and 9, since 10-13 will be controlled by the ethernet shield when it arrives in the mail in a couple of days (it shipped yesterday or the day before). A photo of the circuit is below. My apologies that it looks so messy—I tied a string around each of the positive wires so that I wouldn't get them confused. I would have used red string, but I couldn’t find my sewing kit—just my black button thread: 

4. Look and Feel - USB plug

Below are a couple of photos from building the USB plug to go on the compressor cable. The Exploding Twit Bird will have the USB plug in its beak:

5. Look and Feel: Feet made from sponges:

I cut the feet out of sponges and glued them together:

6. Implementation: Different tape for the balloon-covered wings

In my first 'look and feel' prototype of the wings, I used the only double-sticky tape that I could find at the store I went to. It happened to be 'removable' tape, which is practically worthless. The balloons didn't stay on well enough. I used standard tape in a second prototype, and it worked a lot better. The second photo is of the wing as I am shaking it. No balloons fall off.

Also, FYI: I've spent as much time researching and working on code as I have all of the above prototypes, but I still have some work to go before it is ready to show. Next week, I hope to have everything up and running so that for the final week of classes, I can just tweak some final details and focus most of my energy on making a polished presentation.

Prototyping the Inflatable/Deflatable/Explodable Twitter Bird

Role Prototype: Gauge the overpopularity of a topic on Twitter:

Look and Feel Prototype:

A big twitter bird, perched atop a computer, trying to swallow a USB cable:

Implementation Prototype: A concept map of how all the components fit together. Modify code from last week, feed data to a hacked air compressor, and blow up the twitter bird once the appropriate 'go' or 'arm' button is pressed:

Second look/feel Prototype, a first attempt at constructing the twitter bird:

The cloud project recap.

To follow up on the cloud project here its a summary of the excercise and how Kenny Liz and I made the Hello world happen:

YOU WILL NEED:

• Arduino
• LEDs, wires and resistors
• processing
• PHP

Our first attempt to communicate with Arduino was using a SUPER-complicated PHP script, which can be found at the following address:

http://a.parsons.edu/~rorak586/

this code works, but just in the the localhost, when trying to access de code from the internet it doesnot work, and we have a strong feeling is the USB port (how are we getting access to the arduino from the internet).

The second code that we used can be found here. this code works it is still not very efficient since we were using the serial library and both arduino and processing had to be open and running.

Finallly we worked with this code that uses firmatta to connect to arduino and parses the data from the PHP in a more efficient way.

 

WHAT WE LEARNED

• There are multiple ways to make this Hello world (from the cloud) happen
• You should devide your ideas, it works best to connect processing to the php and the worry about talking to Arduino.
• The easiest and more efficient way to talk to Arduino from processing is with Firmatta.

Please contact Liz, Kenny or Alvaro if you have more questions with this project.

 

Blue Skies

Idea #1: Cloud meets a ginormous LED matrix:

    I'm thinking along the lines of the current installation at Madison Square Park - A giant LED matrix of free-standing/hanging lights, shaped like the United States, or perhaps even a world map. Whenever a tweet or facebook status update or Foursquare check-in is registered, a light comes on in that location (on the map). Basically, the map becomes a twinkling collection of social media posts, showing where people are active in social media, and where they are not.

Idea #2: Cloud meets ginormous Capacitive touch boards:

    This is a bit crazy, but work with me - Games played via the web on giant room-sized capacitive touch boards. A classroom of kids in the US competing with a classroom of kids in, say, the Netherlands, in a game of human checkers or human chess, in which the kids play the part of the chess/checkers pieces. A game of virtual tag or capture the flag, played across the world on giant capacitance touch boards.

Idea #3: Twitter blows up a bird

    This would be extremely hard to implement (as if the other ideas I've come up with wouldn't be), but I like the idea of it as an installation piece. A giant bird model has its torso made up of a big balloon, tracking a person's twitter account. A servo motor turns to push a button that releases air (from an air compressor) into the bird's body every time the person tweets. If he/she tweets enough, the bird is big and robust. If not, the bird deflates. If he/she tweets too much, the bird will over-inflate, and ultimately explode. Pretty cool, huh?

Tweet Stalker!

Video of one of our implementations. Each time Lady Gaga tweets, her face lights up in the picture frame, and Alvaro's heart beats three times. Yes, their heads have been photoshopped onto a bride and groom.

Code to control the Tweet Stalker portrait can be found at: http://a.parsons.edu/~rorak586/blog/pcomp/Tweet_Stalker.pde

Processing/Arduino - Data from the Cloud controls an LED's color

Liz, Alvaro and I worked together to try out different options for communicating with the cloud. Before we met Alvaro found super-complicated PHP/Arduino programs that would talk to one another. They functioned on a local computer, but we could not figure out how to get the PHP script to talk with the computer's serial port once it was posted online.

Meeting together, we started from scratch, and did some more research. After a lot of searching and experimenting with some scripts online, we found two great processing/arduino scripts--the Processing script scrapes a text file for a hexadecimal value and sends it to Arduino, which then sends it to the Arduino board. I wanted to create a PHP form to overwrite the text file using user input, but I'm clearly doing something wrong--after MUCH struggle, the form still doesn't work... BUT, if I update the text file, Processing automatically catches it (it checks for the value every 10 seconds) and the board gets updated.

Scripts are at the following pages:
http://a.parsons.edu/~rorak586/PHP%20Code/serial_rgb_led_too.pde (to be uploaded to the Arduino) and
http://a.parsons.edu/~rorak586/PHP%20Code/http_rgb_led.pde (to be run in processing)

***Note: Order of events: upload the program to the Arduino board, run the processing script, and open the serial monitor in Arduino. If you do not upload first, you'll get an error, and if you do not open the serial monitor, Arduino will not get the values from Processing.

LASTLY (AND VERY IMPORTANTLY), THE WEBSITE WHERE I FOUND THE SCRIPTS: http://todbot.com/blog/2006/10/23/diy-ambient-orb-with-arduino-update/ Liz also came up with a new script after looking at how some things worked. Hers is less complicated and a lot easier to parse through--check out her blog post! Any questions? Let me know!

Katherine Moriwaki's Accessory Design course

From Katherine Moriwaki to her advisees:

Dear Faculty Advisees, 

It's almost registration time and I wanted to make you aware of a NEW class that I will be co-teaching this Spring. It's not on the books, so neither I nor other faculty would have been talking about it, but it's really cool! Basically we are developing high-tech handbags for the Korean luxury brand MCM. Please see the description below. There is prize money involved and each team will have designs selected for sample production! If fashion and technology isn't your passion, it's not a problem, but please let your classmates who would be interested know! There is room for six CDT students, and I think it would be great to get some computational and embedded technology into these bags!

Best, 
Katherine

PUFD 3271 A: Accessory Design: CRN 2758 (Monday 12-2:40)

Listed instructor: Aneta Genova

While other institutions have only just begun to think about how technological advances can enhance the study of fashion and product design, Parsons and The New School have made such connections a reality. By collaborating with a brand such as MCM Worldwide we will challenge our Fashion Design and Technology students to utilize such innovations to create technological advanced accessories.

The project:  Parsons’ students will be challenged to look at the intersections of technology and luxury, addressing issues of aesthetics, functionality and innovation within the context of design.  MCM will donate materials (accessories) to be deconstructed for use in this project.

The Programs: AAS & BFA Fashion Design, BFA/MFA Communication Design Technology and BFA Product Design students will form teams under the guidance of the following Parsons faculty:Katherine Moriwaki, School of Art, Media and Technology, Aneta Genova, School of Fashion and Rama Chorpash, School of Constructed Environments. Students will research the fields of design technology and fabric innovation while addressing themes of utility, versatility & multi-functional use within the design process.

Accessories have an enormous potential for the smart integration of functional technologies to amplify the consumer’s experience by using the accessory. Thus the MCM product line can be extended with creative explorations of ‘smart’ accessories that are luxurious through added technologies. A user-centered design approach will examine functionalities, the perception and the rate of adoption of various technologies by the consumers.

Prize: $10,000 to be divided as follows:

First prize team receives $5,000 to be divided amongst team members

Two runner-up teams will receive $2,500 to be divided amongst team members (total $5,000)

All three teams will have their designs selected for sample production

Evil Monkey and the Cloud meets Arduino

Below are the eyes that will eventually be implanted in a monkey stuffed animal. Unfortunately, I ripped the leg off of my programmable unijunction transistor, so the implant has been delayed, until I can get another in the mail! :(

The super-huggable monkey that I'll turn evil... once I replace my hard-to-find programmable unijunction transistor:

Arduino meets the cloud

Facebook friends' status updates via Arduino:

A twitter-reading robot, through a couple of iterations. Personally, I like the look and feel of their first prototype more than the final version...

A burgler alarm that tweets when someone breaks into your house:

http://www.kelvinsthunderstorm.com/2009/02/twitter-burglar-alarm/