Installation Team Members:
Karma Denn, Casey Knolla, Howard Lakougna

This installation strives to achieve the perception of a synthetic representation of a lightning storm. The visitor is able to interact with the storm and has the ability to control the lightning storm within limitation. This limited control gives the visitor the opportunity to explore how they are connected to the lightning storm as well as how they are actually in control of the storm. Lightning Storms are generally perceived as “uncontrollable” acts of nature. With the lightning storm restricted to individual rectangles the perception of control is clear in this installation. As the visitors cause movement the video reacts and the visitor is then forced to realize their connection to their environment.

With this installation, as soon as people enter the room, they are interacting with it regardless of them being aware of it. With the motion sensor attached to the wall to the side of the paper video panels, it triggers the lightning image projections and the sound which causes the image display to change and the sound to get louder. We combined lightning images with thunder sound and added some diffused L.E.D’s to simulate thunder clouds at the top and bottom of the paper video panels.

Paper Video Panels by Karma Denn:
For this installation we used four individual paper screens to project our PD video onto. The paper screens were constructed out of 3/4” x 1/4” wood trim, they are 5’ feet in height and 1.55’ feet in width. They are spray painted black so as not to distract from the video projection. To make the screen, very thin white tracing paper was applied to the back of each individual rectangle panel using hot glue.

Once the construction of the paper video panels was complete they were hung about 2.4’ feet from the ceiling by hooks and fishing line. Each paper video panel was hung about 3” inches apart from each other. The space we had for this installation was a room that was 24’ feet in width and had three walls, a back wall and two side walls, so the projector was set on a cart against the back wall in the middle of the room, then we projected the video onto the back of the paper video panels which were 16’ feet in front of the projector. The gaps between the paper video panels were covered with strips of white tracing paper to hide the projector. To the left and right hand side of the paper video panel installation black material was hung from floor to ceiling, which was about 8’ feet, and used as curtains to hide the projector, wires, computers, and the motion sensor. An arduino with a motion sensor was strategically placed and attached to the right wall (from viewing area perspective) to be able to pick up the movement of the visitor(s).

“If I were to continue with this installation, I would go back to my original idea which was on a much larger scale than this model. I would have many more projectors and L.E.D’s. I would have more paper video panels constructed together as a maze-like structure so that visitors could move through the video panels and actually get to experience being engulfed by the lightning storm. I would also have more motion sensors to allow the visitor to feel as if they were actually causing the storm as they moved through it. I would also sync the video, audio, and L.E.D.’s together so that they would activate with more precise timing as the visitor is moving through the maze.” – Karma Denn

The PD patch below has the combined video & sound patch used for this installation:

lightning-storm-video-sound.pd

The video below was used for the texture on the rectangles:

Lightning Storm Video

The arduino code below was used for the arduino with motion sensor:

Arduino Code for Motion Sensor

Sound Effects by Howard Lakougna:
The sound for this installation was created using the gold wave software. Using 6 samples of different sound effect, we created our own lightning sound and wind blowing by matching the similar end of each sample.

The name of the sound file in this patch has to be 1.wav or the name can be modified by going to the pd howardsounds subpatch.

The sound file below was used in the above PD patch:

lightningstorm sound effects (mp3 format)

“If I were to continue on my project, some features that we would add, a better diffuser that entirely diffuses the different LEDs colors flashing. Modify the fading timers because ours seemed a bit too fast. A PD patch that would play the wind sound alone the whole time and when the sensor gets trigger, the lightning sound would get added on top of it. Use a different panel display that has some space between them (one behind the other).” – Howard Lakougna

L.E.D Thunder Clouds by Casey Knolla:
This installation used 4 Arduinos, each holding 4 LEDs, flashing at pseudo-random times to create a lightning effect. The lower 2 Arduinos were behind clear plastic and toilet paper. The upper 2 were behind only plastic and were suspended by fishing line. All 4 were connected using USB to 1 computer.

“If I were to continue on my project, I would first find a more effective diffuser. We changed the setup after I had decided on my first diffusing idea, so I just went with what was available. I would also take more time to play with the fading timers. They seemed a bit too fast. I would also have liked to have more hardware to try out on the Arduino besides just sensors. Most of all I just want to learn more about the Arduino.” – Casey Knolla

The below Arduino file has the code that was used for the simulated thunder clouds for this installation:

L.E.D. Thunder Clouds Arduino Code

Materials needed for this installation:
• Large Installation space 24’ wide by 18’ in length with 3 walls
• 2 computers with enough RAM for video & a decent cpu, preferably running Linux Ubuntu + power cord, extension cord & power strip
• At least one monitor with vga & power cord, keyboard & mouse for testing
• High Resolution Projector + power, vga & extension cord + cart
• Hello Pure Data Software
• Arduino Software
• Goldwave Software
• 5 Arduino’s with breadboards & shields + lots of wire.
• 5 usb cords
• At least 14 L.E.D.’s but more could be used
• A motion sensor
• At least 2 speakers with power cord, but more could be used
• 2 pieces of black material 6’ feet in width and 8’ feet in length
• 8 pieces of 3/4” x 1/4” wood trim
• Miter Saw to cut wood trim
• 4 pieces of thin white tracing paper 5.1’ feet long x 1.6’ feet wide
• 3 pieces of thin white tracing paper 5.1’ feet long x 3.1” inches wide
• Hot Glue Gun & Glue sticks
• 8 Hooks
• Light weight fishing line
• Black Spray paint
• Clear Plastic & Toilet Paper (or other materials to use as L.E.D. diffusers)
• Ladder
• Wire strippers
• Electrical & Clear Box Tape
• Staple Gun (for black material)
• Scissors

Source Code Library:
• lightning-storm-video-sound.pd
• Arduino Code for Motion Sensor
• Arduino Code

 ¤¤¤ Sunset Project ¤¤¤

 Sunset Group Member:

Viet Pham
Cassandra Jordan
Savang Thun

Project Description:

The sunset project entertains people by offering a beautiful scenary of nature that includes mountains, trees, and moon. Besides this display, the viewers can also hear the cricket and bird sound from the background and watching the moon moves around back and forth at the same time. All of these to allow the viewers to experience a real beauty of nature from in door. It can make them feel great and relaxed as well. To build up this project, we made three holes on the wall and then attached three short pipes through them for the audiences to look through. By looking through those holes, the audience can see the view of mountain and tree surrounded by grass. They can also see the moon moves around in three different directions.

Technical Physical Description:

We use PD to animate the moon movement and play the sound at night. During display, we use a computer to play the PD while the monitor is used to display the moon. We also use a projector to project the moon from the monitor onto a purple fabric. The moon was projected on that fabric just right above the prototype mountain.

Source Codes:

This is the PD to play that sound and the sound: sound-and-pd
This is the PD to animate the moon: moon_final1

The Project: Four Seasons

The Members:Brenton Schoenthaler, Jon Baca, & Jeff Broomhead

The Nut Shell:Four seasons allows the user to change from one season to the next.   As the user moves closer to the display the picture changes from winter to spring, then summer and fall, and finally back to winter.  The speed of the change was based on the speed of the users advance or retreat.  The display could move very slowly, almost advancing one frame at a time.

The Invisible Tech:  An ultra-sonic sensor measures the proximity of the user and the display adjusts according to that proximity.  An arduino controls the sensor, through the use of CAT 3 cable, and relays the information from the sensor to a Pd patch running on a computer.  The arduino was connected to the computer with a USB cable.  The Pd patch interpreters the signal data and adjusts the displayed picture.  A video projector was used to for the display.

Project Schematic

Project Set-up

Video:

final-project1

Program Code:

ultrasonic1

Project Name: Virtual Aurora Borealis

Group Members:
-Lee, Hin Yun
-William Livengood
-Osman Rasheed

Our project is a physical re-creation of the aurora borealis with audio that mixes between static and different sound tracks (classic rock, prog rock and various speeches) to simulate historic radio signals being picked up from the aurora. When the LEDs light up, the static will fade out and audio tracks will fade in. It detects presence of humans by their shadows. We put up a light source infront of the photocells and let the arduino calibrate. When people walk up to it, their shadows will change the readings of the photocells and the LEDs will lights. Different photocells light up different LEDs. The more the LEDs light up, the more the static will fade away.

Equipment used are BlinkMs, photocells, two giant screening boards(?), amplifier, two speakers (two more later), a PC running pd, fishing lines, duct tape, a lamp, wires and headers. BlinkMs and photocells go to the arduino. The arduino goes to the PC to communicate with pd. Speakers go to the amplifier and the amplifier goes to the PC. The fishing lines hold the BlinkMs up. All arranged randomly behind the screens. Photocells are stuck below the screens.

(images stolen from the project above without permission)

Looks like this when they all light up:

Instructions for arduino

1. BlinkM:

-BlinkMs are all wired in parallel serial to the I2C bus

* Arduino analog input 4 = I2C SDA (data) (d)
* Arduino analog input 5 = I2C SCL (clock) (c)

-20 BlinkMs addresses set from 0×01 to 0×14 (I think you number them 1 to 20 in decimal when assigning the address)

*Refer to datasheet page 21 for the set address function
*Refer to datasheet Figure 2.2.1 page 10 for individual BlinkM connections for EEPROM programming
*Address 0×00 is used as a common address to test all BlinkMs on startup

-Sensor number arranged in ascending order from left to right (10 on each screen)

-BlinkMs arranged in ascending order according to the sensor’s number from left to right (0×01 to 0x0A on the left screen, 0x0B to 0×14 on the right screen)

BlinkM input diagram: http://jp.makezine.com/blog/2008/01/ledblinkm.html
BlinkM datasheet: http://thingm.com/fileadmin/thingm/downloads/BlinkM_datasheet.pdf

2. Photocell sensors:

PDF: photocells-matrixed

*Resistor value depends on the type of photocells used

Do not click here

Instructions for pd
Create folders named “sounds1″ and “sounds2″ in the pd’s directory(included in the archive). .wav files numbered 1 to ∞ go to folders “sounds1″ and “sounds2″. They must be stereo and should match the playback sample rate of pd (default: 44100Hz). I converted them with mediacoder. Put static.wav in sounds1(included in the archive). I put classic rock in sounds1 and speeches in sounds2. You’ll need to change the max number of wav files in the patch to the highest numbered .wav file for each of the folders. The controls are self explanatory. Arduino must be connected to the machine first before they could work together after opening the pd patch. Otherwise, comport must be opened manually. Device name must point to arduino and can be changed in the subpatch “arduino_communications”. Please ask google if unsure of the operations. You can also play with the mixing sliders without the arduino connected. If you try to run it without any valid .wav files in the folders, prepare to duck because your CPU will become a fused semi-liquid nitroglycerin. When communicating with arduino, the sounds channel may be swapped. To fix it, just swap the lines from the arduino_communications subpatch object.

There’s nothing else to improve on this pd patch. I’ll probably play around with the osc~ bandwidth sweeping sound. Also pd is rubbish at handling mp3 files so don’t bother changing it to run on mp3.

Standalone instructions
Both arduino and pd will run standalone without any modifications. To play with the pd patch, just move the mix sliders around. There are two set of sliders, one to simulate fade in/fade out which is the effect I put in my pd patch when it reads data from arduino and the other that just changes the mix immediately.

What would we do next
Use ultrasonic sensors instead of photocells just in case someone wants to advertise some construction stuff on LCD directly in front of the project.

Other notes
There is no easy way to do this. Anyone who wants to re-create this project must have sufficient knowledge in C programming, electronics circuitry, digital logic and soldering skills.

Source codes
aurora-sounds
aurora-arduino
Aurora sounds: Spaghetti version (this is the final version from the gallery, keyboard shortcuts and a lot of coding done in the middle of presentation)

Sunrise Group Members:

• Nghi Nguyen
• Maria Aguirre
• Ron Stidham
• Amine Bennani

Project Description:

Our project was about giving the viewers different perspectives of one of the most beautiful things on our planet, sunrise. We made four peepholes as well as a monitor out along the wall to give the viewer five different views to choose from. We made a display which included mountains and trees to help excentuate the beauty that is sunrise. There were also birds chirping and waterfall sounds to help further the experience.

Technical Physical Description:

Through PD we were able to make the sunrise, as well as incorporate sounds that are relevant to it. The clock that we had was ran by an arduino, the original thought was to sync the two but that never came to fruition. We used a projector to project the sun onto a bedsheet, a webcam and cpu to help capture the entire sunrise, and Nghi’s laptop with the PD code on it.

nghi3                                                             motorstepper2222

Sound to Video

Team members are:

Aum

Ivy

Jeswin

Eldon

This project involved both sight and sound experience for the viewer. When approached within a certain distance, the wind box would activate random, swirling light patterns and the sound of rushing wind in a surround pattern about the observer. Likewise, the lightning box flashed random patterns and random durations for lightning effect, coupled with surround-sound thunder emanating from different directions at different times. Also on display was a structure with water trickling down the glass facing that provided a realistic visual and sound effect of ongoing rain, especially suited for the Spring season.

Below is the circuit diagram for the lightning box. Not shown in the diagram is the toilet, IR sensor connected to one of the Arduino analog inputs. The box incorporated 60 white LED’s connected in parallel, each one having its own 1K ohm resistor since we used a 12 volt source to light all the LED’s simultaneously in a random pattern generated by the programming inside the Arduino.

Below is the circuit diagram for the Wind Box LED 10 X 6 matrix. Inside the programming, each leg’s voltage was initially set in such a way that all the LED’s were in a reverse bias condition to protect against undesirable lighting of entire legs of LED’s once activation was initiated. The program would randomly set one of the vertical columns (from 0 to 5) to ground, and then sequentially set to high and then delay to low again, based upon a random delay generated by the program, each of the horizontal legs (from 0 to 9).

It would have been more desirable to incorporate additional LED’s into the lightning display so that more than one pattern would have flashed at different times, creating a more realistic looking display through the diffused plastic. The texture of the diffuser was very appropriate for rain.

The workflow of this project was very well structured so that each member knew what we were to do, rather than different people duplicating efforts. Some aspects of the project had to be scaled down in order to work within time and material constraints. It’s very easy to over-complicate a project with all the neat ideas flying about, so a general rule must be remembered, otherwise known as the KIS method (keep it simple). Its very easy to ruin a good thing with overly complex additions, especially when those complexities are thrown in late in the game. It’s always best to get a second opinion before making any additions once the workflow has begun.

Source Code for Wind and Lightning Boxes

Evolutionary Pong

Group Members = Chris Zammit, Barrett Ellis, Thomas Hoefer

Project Description = Evolutionary Pong was a life size interactive pong game that included two persons to position themselves on a gaming area projected on the floor.  The two players would stand at opposite ends and depending on there position a paddle would follow there movement.  The object of the game is to keep the ball in play by hitting it back to each other with the paddles.  This interactive competitive nature evolved the balls graphic by changing states every time the ball was hit to the opposite player. 

Technical Physical Description = The brains of the Evolutionary pong was the intense programming code ran by a single computer.  The software used for programming was pd (Pure Data) which gave the display of a playing field with ball movement.  This program was interfaced with two Arduino microcontrollers that took inputs from two separate ultrasonic sensors.  These inputs from the Arduino were fed to the pure data pong program to control paddle position according to where the players were with respect to the ultrasonic sensors.  Two projectors were used to project a life sized image of the pong game onto the floor.  A Bose radio was used to give sound to the pong game.  With all these components together, a life sized pong game was developed and achieved, along with a little disco fever with a disco ball.

Schematic of PONG

 Pictures = http://www.flickr.com/photos/26562099@N00/sets/72157617170785141/

The Pong Board

The First Look

Source Code =

Pd Code

Arduino Code

Pong Video(Had to be .zipped because the blog didn’t like .mp4)

 If you are wanting to run this on your home computer It probably wont work too well because it is programmed to be ran on a dual monitor machine. I have the luxury of having that at home. However if you would like to look around at how it works feel free.

If we were going to continue developing this project I think that the next step would be to clean it up. There are some parts of the game which are slightly buggy. The randomizer which determines the speed of the ball in one direction (and thus the angle of the ball) could use some tweaking, and the hit detection algorithm is not perfect. However I beleive that given the short development time, that this project turned out very well.