projects

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2010-04-30T23:42:00.001-07:00

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one button drumMachine - Exploded

2010-03-02T00:36:00.001-08:00

one button drumMachine - Exploded, originally uploaded by mdshaub.

An exploded view from SketchUp of my one button solenoid drum machine project idea. Each layer's shape was exported, printed, and made into a template for shaping the actual layers of plywood and acrylic.

one button drumMachine - Perspective

2010-03-02T00:35:00.001-08:00

one button drumMachine - Perspective, originally uploaded by mdshaub.

A perspective rendering from SketchUp of my one button solenoid drum machine project idea. All the components were modeled in SketchUp, arranged around my rough shape sketches, and plywood layers were routed out to hold the elements in place.

The project was for the KOKOROMI’S ONE-BUTTON GAME OBJECTS contest, the concept being a one button controlled 5 track arduino drum machine that taps out the beats with 5 solenoids.

Play - An Interactive Drawing Game

2010-01-16T16:49:00.000-08:00

I just finished this interactive drawing + exploration game that I programmed in Processing as an announcement for my place of employment, Sussman/Prejza, an environmental design company the does urban branding and wayfinding.

We sent out an email with several arrows to choose from, each of which leads to a slightly different version of the game. The game is meant to encourage us all to try new things, explore, and see the wonderful and beautiful results that can come from just a few steps into a world of creativity and new possibilities.

As you navigate this space with your arrow avatar of choice, you reveal hidden colors and create new shapes based on how you touch the different forms. Some simple decisions, like how far you will move your arrow or if your first move was to the left or to the right, determine major shifts of color.

Then, when you decide you are finished exploring, you can see the entire landscape you have explored and the results of your interactions. Each visitor is encouraged to sign their drawing and add it to a gallery of similar but unique works. I hope that it is just as interesting to see what was made as who made it.

The programming for this game was quite a learning experience, building on a class I took at Machine Project in LA and a number of simple Arduino projects I have completed in my free time. The largest hurdles were the trigonometry needed to complete the spinning and collision detection and the image uploading for saving images to our gallery. Thanks to the other Processing users who helped me in tackling the image uploading, you are also recognized in the source code!

I hope to build on this experience to create more projects for the web, mobile devices, and architectural spaces. I hope you play the game and I look forward to seeing even more additions to the image gallery.

Cat Tracking _ Test Photo 1

2009-10-07T07:06:00.003-07:00

Cat Tracking _ Test Photo 1, originally uploaded by mdshaub.

I compiled all the frames of the video of my cat wearing an LED marker into a simulated long-exposure photo. The original video frames were processed to only include the LED marker on a black background.

AfterEffects was then used with the Time Echo filter to overlay all the frames of video onto each other.

The LED light is colored blue at the beginning of the video and shifts to cyan by the end. I'd hoped that this would make it easy to trace the motion over time but with the over-exposed areas looking cyan as well it is not perceivable.

Cat Tracking _ Standing Tall

2009-10-07T07:06:00.001-07:00

Cat Tracking _ Standing Tall, originally uploaded by mdshaub.

This is my cat Mouse.
He'll do just about anything for a treat, including put up with a new collar fitted with an LED, watch battery, and ping-pong ball diffuser.

He knows how to act like the star of the show. The only negative part of the experience is a newfound fear of full sheets of foamcore (the backdrop) and concern about the digital camera being tied to some other "project" idea of mine.

Cat Tracking_TestVideo1

2009-10-06T23:58:00.001-07:00

Cat Tracking_TestVideo1, originally uploaded by mdshaub.

Realtime video of my cat wearing an LED marker. The original video frames were processed to only include the LED marker on a black background.

AfterEffects was used with the Time Echo filter to overlay the last 200 frames of video throughout.

The next test will be to compile all the frames of the video as a simulated long-exposure photo.

Wire Drawing 1

2009-09-27T23:36:00.000-07:00

Partially working program to draw wires that are affected by gravity for J-woo. This only draws one wire, doesn't import a bg image, and doesn't export yet. But, it's a start.

Click here or on the image to test the app.

PixelPusher - New Project Idea

2009-09-27T20:17:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a little bit about ways of visualizing images that are different from the rectangular pixels I usually see. I've built a Processing sketch that changes the rectangles into other shapes, and that's nice. The individual elements don't need to be on a rectangular grid, but could be hexagonal or triangular, or other tessellating shapes.
I also really like the motion of physics simulations in Processing, and I thought maybe an image could be made by repelling and attracting pixels that settle into irregular patterns but communicate gradations none the less. I learned to do this in illustration school when it was called stippling.

Without any work in code yet, I've mocked up what this might look like. It's only black and white so far, but color could be added (either RGB or CMYK or something else).

Pixel Field: Evenly spaced pixels waiting for a source image

Source Image: Pixels repelled and attracted by the dark and light areas of the photo

A related Processing sketch here

Airplane Shadows _ Mockup 1

2009-09-07T23:35:00.001-07:00

Airplane Shadows _ Mockup 1, originally uploaded by mdshaub.

A quick mockup of a project idea. I love the flight patterns project from years past, and have always wanted to build something similar. Seeing a number of airplane shadows pass over my office gave me this idea. I hope to build an airplane shadow map using flight position, altitude, heading, and aircraft type coupled with calculations for sun angles.

The scale and speed should be pretty accurate, 100 foot long plane traveling at 570 mph (about 830 feet per sec). That's pretty fast, viewing at this scale.

Putting the results into Google Maps would be step 1, though I'd love that in Google Earth you'd see the shadows rolling over hills.

Bonsai V4.0 _ Matrix Revisited

2009-09-07T23:25:00.000-07:00

I dug out my LED Matrices and was pleasantly surprised that I'd designed these custom carrier boards and had some sample code on my laptop that actually worked.

This is in support of Dao's latest project, and she's currently working on the other half (a dress sewn from scratch, and a custom matrix of LEDs connected with conductive fabric tape and thread).

We're both glad the arduino controller bit is taken care of.

FYI, these carrier boards would be even better if I hadn't messed up some pins so the matrix rows go 8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Ah, it can always be fixed in the code, and was!

Project Ideas

2009-04-19T22:50:00.000-07:00

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

Drawing Machines
fix older 2 arm drawing machine
+ develop new drawing program & Arduino controller

build new Record Player drawing machine
Modify rotation for servo or stepper power
Add optical reader for tracking rotation (if needed)
Modify tune arm for servo control (geared down?)
Add pen-up control
+ develop new drawing program & Arduino controller

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

2008-12-01T00:41:00.000-08:00

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

2008-09-03T00:01:00.001-07:00

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

2008-08-04T00:33:00.001-07:00

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

2008-08-03T23:55:00.001-07:00

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

2008-03-06T21:13:00.000-08:00

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

2008-03-06T20:46:00.000-08:00

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.

Fireflies and Code

2008-01-19T18:03:00.000-08:00

I'm back to doing some work in Processing, not to draw trees but bugs. A long story could be told about how I heard a story on Radiolab about Emergence, specifically a story about lightning bugs in South Asia that blink in sync, which led to my receiving a book for Christmas called Emergence, which helped inspire some new art work.

This is the first successful sketch I've written that really does the synchronization I heard about by the lightning bugs. You can interact with the little guys a bit, moving the mouse near them makes them stop blinking, getting out of sync, and they'll try to move away from you a bit as well.

(click the image to see the sketch)

The plan is to work out the "bugs" in the programming, and then build a nice little swarm of electronic lightning bugs that will have the same behavior, and be reactive to people around them as well.

Welcome Visitors

2007-08-24T20:35:00.001-07:00

I just realized that Ladyada mentioned my project on her blog.

I much appreciate that, and those of you who have stopped by all the way from Arizona, Missouri, and Maryland. I'm in Los Angeles, so it was nice to see some local attention too.

Please leave a comment if something strikes you. I'll try to keep adding progress so check back once in a while too.

Thanks!

I've also been spotted on Make's website.
Thanks to the visitors from overseas incl: Italy, Russia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Kuwait, Bolivia, Japan, India, UK, and Brazil.

Research

2007-08-18T21:27:00.000-07:00

No Research! Really!

no, not really. Just none documented, and nicely displayed. Yet.

Tumbleweed Re-Direct

2007-08-18T21:26:00.001-07:00

Sorry, no blogging about this project yet. For now please see the test drive videos here:

Test_Drive

Processing Based Forestry

2007-08-18T21:03:00.000-07:00

I've been building some Processing sketches to draw trees. This lead me to L-Systems (or Lindenmayer Systems) which are great rule-based formulas that can be used to draw patterns with natural looking forms. These same formulas can be used to describe natural growth and formations.

The most successful sketch to-date is this one. It's based on a sketch called "Hairball" that I found on a page belonging to W. Xavier Sneigrove. I've tweaked a bit of the code to make trees instead.

(click the image to see the sketch)

I hope to someday combine this with the bonsai hardware so it can display a unique naturalistic tree that's "grown" from software rather than a single 3D model that I labored over. This will definitely open up the possibility for the kind of slow interaction I'm hoping for as well. That the plant would grow more on the side facing a window during the day, or some kind of pruning or training. Something slow would be nice.

L-system Drawing

2007-08-18T21:01:00.000-07:00

This Processing sketch features a truly l-system based plant. I haven't figured out how to "grow" this plant in the same way as the very curly other one. When you click in the window of this sketch it jumps another generation in the weed drawing formula.

Based on the l-system rule: (X → F-[[X]+X]+F[+FX]-X),(F → FF)
Example 8: Fractal plant from wikipedia

V4.0 - 3D Pre-Visualization 3

2007-08-01T07:47:00.001-07:00

A second animation finished. This does a nice slow descent while it spins. I'm ready to try building this.

(click the image to see the in-progress animation)