Project Ideas

Fish Machine 3 - Theremin Sound
Order theremin kit
Assemble, test, and tune
Test with fish tank, re-tune and test for interference
Develop tone visualizer in Processing, PD, or other

LED Bonsai 4 - California Endangered Species
Develop Processing sketch to visualize hairball designs to new 3D

Lamp Shades 3D Models - Rapid Prototyped
Develop Processing 3D recursive models

Plywood Furniture
Shelves, Bench, Table

Recipe Screen
LCD displaying current recipe in Kitchen
Add browsing and later editing

Rapid Prototyping Machines
Additive Machine
Milling Machine

Electric Car Conversion



RFID Pet Trackers

Arduino - Relay Shield?

Happy Holidays

I'm back to doing some work in Processing, actually building on some of the older work drawing trees. This is for my holiday e-card, some nice fractal snowflakes. Saw a program on PBS about the history of fractals that got me all excited about them again. This program uses L-Systems to draw the recursive bits, and as kind of a hack draws 3 Koch Curves to make each Snowflake.










(click the image to see the sketch)

RGB Firefly Sync

RGB Firefly Sync, originally uploaded by mdshaub.

My circuit board-to-be. I'm working on a new project based on the great work here:
tinkerlog.com/2008/07/27/synchronizing-fireflies-ng/
In my 1st version, I will house the circuit within a ping pong ball. Ordered the boards through SparkFun for $2.50 ea. today!
Oh, and used Eagle3D to generate these renders in POVRay.

My Personal Planet #1 - test 2

My Personal Planet #1 - test 2, originally uploaded by mdshaub.

My second attempt at making a planet from the same source video from PointGrey. This one has a little stubbier buildings, more foreground, and a better blurring of the center of the image. That turned out pretty well considering I had to cover up the car that shot the video sequence.

If I shot my own footage, I guess I'd have more sky above.

My Personal Planet #1

My Personal Planet #1
Originally uploaded by mdshaub

Well, sort of a departure, but not really spending enough time on electronics recently to make much progress. This is a fun little distraction, not so unlike the Peter Pan series of photos.

Inspired by the small planets found here on Flickr and elsewhere. They reminded me of the Little Prince and I certainly wanted one of my own. I happened upon a sample panoramic video from PointGrey Research (ptgrey.com) and had to try this out.

I'll likely try a version where the buildings aren't so exaggerated next. Maybe shoot some of my own photos/video too.

Processing Research

Some attempts to make grass blowing in the wind yielded interesting results and a little confusion/bewilderment/frustration. Pretty normal.

I found some examples that may help:
3D Grass

Swirling Noise

Trees not Grass

Fluid Dynamics

Pollen Sand Storm

WindChimes Project

Last weekend on a long drive I willed a new idea into existence. I'll try to make a high-tech version of some wind chimes. The project should be more ambient than very literal, both visual and auditory. I'd like to say that the final piece should help connect someone to the outdoors even when they must be inside. It might be more thought provoking to do that through a medium that seems so opposite, so disconnected from nature, and that I like very much.

We'll see how it goes, what form it takes, and if it's one thing or many, separate or interconnected.