Interactive Device Project2: Skitzie the Cat

Skitzie the Cat is just your average black cat that likes to hang out on your shoulder. They are curious and like to people watch while you do your stuff. But Skitzie is very shy, hence pretends to be a scarf when anyone comes too close.

(insert hooman wearable sketch)

About Skitzie the Cat

Skitzie is a guardian for those who are not to aware of their surroundings. In a sense Skitzie’s ‘hasty retreat’ to become a scarf is a warning that there are on coming people approaching.

For this project, I had imagined Skitzie to be able to move their head and their ears to see the world. Skitzie is also envisioned to be able to ‘blink’ through LEDs and hum through a speaker. I wanted there to be sound or light as an indicator to the person who is wearing Skitzie to know very clearly when Skitzie is a cat and when they are pretending to be a scarf. The Warning has to be distinct enough to catch people’s notice.

Skitzie’s hardware

Skitzis is a combination of servo motors and a sharp

  1. Testing the Servo Motor:

Website Reference: https://www.instructables.com/id/Arduino-Servo-Motors/

2. Testing the Proximity sensor

Sharp ir arduino 0

Website Reference: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/jenniferchen/distance-measuring-sensor-900520

I combine the circuits and then made a head.

Testing out the Eyes circuit, it works. Turns off and on depending on the closeness.

For Some odd reason though when i add the ears, the eyes disappeared.

Then it got fixed (connections are problematic, check everythingggg).

This is the body, that I made around the head servo motor.

All Assembled.

Reflections:

Honestly the aesthetic of Skitzie didnt come out right, which I am a little bit disappointed by. Subsequently the head keeps falling off if left for too long, so I need to fix that in future. Hopefully we will see the return f a better Skitzie in future.

 

 

Refernces:

  • https://www.google.com/search?q=code+servo+motor+with+sensor&oq=code+servo+motor+with+sensor&aqs=chrome..69i57j0.11575j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#kpvalbx=_VbKEXdWDPNjc9QPCsoCIBA25

Final Project: Trio

One musician makes a Solo.

Two musicians make a Duet.

Three musicians make a Trio.

So lets make a Trio.

Three is a weird number, we only have two hands after all, so to have three sensors you would need at least another person to make sure all sensors are occupied to control the sound that is made (of course the preferable number is three, but I do so wish to see two people flailing around).

Why did I create trio? I guess it was more along the lines of finding a project that seems fun to interact with, but at the same time you struggle to make it work for you. At the end of the day the device is really just a commentary of how sometimes in life while you are trying your best to make something work, the end result does not bear fruit, or even better, bears fruit but there is not really a take away to this situation now is there?

In summary, let me waste your time.

The Circuit:

Life update:

Initially in the previous post I had made my code entirely out of Piezzo Buzzers and ultrasonic sensors, made to beep in a set tempo. Which, to be honest, is not really what I wanted. I want the tempo to be set by removing the object in front of the sensors face. But after editing the code I realise a major issue: the ultrasonic sensor is kind of being influenced by the buzzer it self.

(insert confused noises) It was steady before? But that was when the ultrasonic sensor only needed to play one tone with an interval in between, hence meaning it was not reading the environment every second hence it does not get influenced before.

So at this point it was time to consider changing my components.

Sharp ir arduino 0

Image taken from: https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/jenniferchen/distance-measuring-sensor-900520

So I tried out the Sharp infrared/proximity? sensor. It goes by distance sensor at Continental.

Putting the entire circuit together, a single Piezzo buzzer and an Arduino together, the circuit works.

However, duplicating the code becomes a bit more troublesome. As it turns out, you cannot fit 3 piezzo buzzers to a single Arduino and expect them to ‘sound’ at the same time (Trouble shooting this the night before and realising you have to duplicate the circuit and not the code is really bad for your health by the way).

I did not account for this tripling of the space needed to store my three Arduinos, three distance sensors, three piezzo buzzers and three power packs. It is a super tight fit, mind you. By right I can squeeze everything into the box,. But by left squeezing very thing in the night before the showcase and then snapping something is not an ideal situation.

Piecing them together:

From the last post I showed that I laser cut, filed and spray painted my pieces, accordingly:

Since that time, I had to redo the black pieces, to fit the Sharp Infrared Sensor instead of the Ultrasonic sensor. Hence cut a rectangular piece instead.

I have also cut some wedges to support the structure.

And I stacked all my pieces up and glued them together with a glue gun.

Finally I stuck my components inside the surface.

Reflections:

In this case I have achieved what I wanted to in this project, the three sensors play according to the distance of them and the object. However maybe in future I would like to be a bit more ambitious/annoying and make the circuit for more (time to make a symphony for one then).

Of course there are a bit more things I should have accounted for, like the size of the circuit, or the potential increase of the circuit.

Final Project: I tried to be a Musician

Looking at my final project, I was rather sceptical about what it is i wanted to do, as I was out of ideas.

I spent quite a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to do, and realised looking for ideas just got me more and more distracted from actually finding an idea. Hence I decided to build on that feeling of wasting time and made a product that ‘wastes other people’s time’.

The entire project ‘I tried to be a musician’ is kind of looking at the idea of people doing things for fun, finding ‘useless’ talents that seem entertaining but at the end of the day, there is not much value added to the experience.

I kind of remembered some people making music videos with Calculators and the squeaky chickens (help, I never realised they are made by the same person). The kind of music videos where you look at them and realise ‘wow, you are so talented’ and immediately after ‘where the heck do you get the time to do this sort of things’.

So I decided lets make a musical instrument too, something easy to understand and grasp and make a jumble of sound, but hard to actually make something decent, to prompt others to try harder to make the product work for them, or give up instantly after understanding that it is going to be a waste of time.

I guess this project is really just to emulate that idea of having fun trying to solve a problem, but at the end of the day, you are just wasting time having fun. (Is that considered wasting time? who knows?)

The Making:

So the components of the project are relatively simple. It is a combination of two simple circuits, one for an ultrasonic sensor, and another for a buzzer:

Source: https://howtomechatronics.com/tutorials/arduino/ultrasonic-sensor-hc-sr04/

learn_arduino_fritzing.jpg

Source: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-arduino-lesson-10-making-sounds/playing-a-scale

I found that by using a buzzer I technically can code for the entire keyboard is i find the list of numbers associated with the tone. By allocating a set distance the ultrasonic sensor and my hand, I essentially have a no-touch piano keyboard. Yay.

Taking it a step further, because why not? I duplicated the code by three, splitting them according by octaves. We only have two hands so I wish you luck trying to learn how to play this annoying child >:D

Pictures:

The setup for a single set of buzzer and ultrasonic sensor pair.

The there is the external pieces.

I first laser cut my pattern out:

 

Then after that i Spray painted the pieces:

Videos:

So Far there is two:

The range of the sound seems to similar i need to increase the range to make it more interesting.

Reading Assignment Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age by Margot Lovejoy

Art is a form of expression or reaction to contemporary themes, hence that is why there are groups of artists who creates Art as a form of commentary about the changes in society.

The book ‘Digital currents: Art in the Electronic age’ is a compilation of the changes society and the art world has taken during the Digital age. The first chapter capture the revolutionary change in the art world brought about by the camera. This chapter compares the past forms art before the birth of photography. Art then had revolved around the ways of seeing, ‘how does one recreate what is 3D on a 2D or another 3D surface?’. The creation of the camera shortens that process, flattening reality into the span of a 2D image, a photograph. The birth of this new technology presents a more accurate image of reality, hence the book comments ‘after today, painting is dead’. In terms of skill, the artist replication of reality could never beat the accuracy of the camera.

However when one door closes, artists turn to find new ways to make use of this new form of image making, while other artist make use of old mediums like painting to create new forms of expressions.

The book also talks about new forms of visual art, other then simply using photography of illustrating a beautiful composition, there is the rise of photo collage to create a surreal juxtaposition of images.

Art is a commentary, and with the huge and rapid change brought to society during the digital age, there was many issues to criticise or be enthralled by. Artist like Andy Warhol had criticised the creation of the mass production, how unfeeling and typical it was becoming. He made use of stencils and silk screen to replicate exactly the image created by a machine. In this sense, we see that the art world has become more contemplative, more concept driven, a bystander to societies change, to draw attention to issues. Their role in art making has been elevated to that of an intellect rather then a simple skilled craftsman.

The digital age also brought about new technologies, hence new ways to create art. What is art? One would wonder. This book highlights the creation of new mediums beyond traditional mediums like paint, stone and clay. In fact, they talk about cameras for photography and film, they talk about projections on screens and installations to interact with. The digital age reminds us that anything can be art so long as it has the purpose to communicate ideas.

In conclusion, the digital age was a big game changer in the art world as it changed the view of what art could be in terms of aesthetic, form and purpose.

 

Book: Lovejoy, Margot. Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age. New York, NY: Routledge, 2004