projects

RGB Firefly Sync

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 07:01:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:33:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 06:55:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 05:13:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:46:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 02:03:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 03:35:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 04:27:00 +0000

No Research! Really!

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

Tumbleweed Re-Direct

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 04:26:00 +0000

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

Test_Drive

Processing Based Forestry

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 04:03:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 04:01:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 14:47:00 +0000

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)

V4.0 - 3D Pre-Visualization 2

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 07:03:00 +0000

An animation of the pre-visualization finished enough frames for me to relax a little. I think this will look enough like a bonsai to be recognizable to others. I really just hope that an average viewer knows what it's supposed to represent. It seems that seeing this in the round really helps make the form visible.

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

V4.0 - 3D Pre-Visualization 1

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 06:53:00 +0000

I've finished a rough 3D model of a fairly realistic Bonsai. I may post some process, but after much slicing in various ways and directions I finished cutting up my model into matrix-friendly pieces. (8x8 pixel squares)

I was also busy building a model of the upcoming hi-res matrices and some way to pre-visualize the display of the aforementioned sliced up 3D model. The result of many attempts is pretty accurate to what I expect the V4.0 device to look like once it's all programmed up and spinning. This display assumes I'll have a resolution of 32 x 32 pixels, which will only require 1 chain of matrix-controller chips and only 3 lines from my controller.

V4.0 - LED Matrix Circuits

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 06:47:00 +0000

As my photos illustrate all too well, the wiring of the matrices is pretty hairy. I'm planning to have some more prototype boards made as a back for each matrix. I'll try to build in the interfacing between these boards, so they'll all plug into each-other when I build a larger array.

I'm still using the freeware EagleCAD program, and I'm right in the middle of building a new library for the matrix. There's already a part for the MAX7221 (actually the MAX7219) so I don't have to worry about that.

I'd like to get the boards ordered ASAP, so I can experiment with more matrices at once. Though, I'm concerned that I'll discover the boards are wrong or could have been better. Kind of a catch22, so I may just have a couple made up or do them at home again. (sigh)

V4.0 - LED Matrix Code Driven Animation

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 06:18:00 +0000

I'm pretty happy with myself for this one. I've been reading the recently published book on Processing. I'm glad too, because the Arduino environment is based on the Processing language and this has given me enough understanding to patch together the useful pieces of code I found earlier.

There was an early example in the Processing book of a bouncing ball within a little rectangle on screen. I thought I might be able to adapt that code to work in the matrix. It didn't need much adjusting, and was much simpler as I didn't need to "draw" a rectangle or an ellipse. So, check out the bouncing:

Arduino Code:
Bouncing Ball

V4.0 - LED Matrix Animates

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 06:08:00 +0000

I created a couple monotonous pieces of code to generate an animated line. Before I did any serious coding I figured I should just try shoving a bunch of frames at the matrix and test the speed/refresh rate. I did make an Excel spreadsheet, where I can fill out grids that generate their own code.

I made a couple animated sequences with that. Click on these frames to see the animations:

Arduino Code:
Counting Animation
Pattern Animation

V4.0 - LED Matrix lights up

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 05:48:00 +0000

I found a great deal of help with this online. Oddly specific to the task, a search for MAX7221 and Arduino gets a lot of results in Arduino forums and project pages. There's a little code, but mostly overview, basic questions answered, details meaningless to beginners (like me), and my favorite pseudocode.

I did get this to work anyway. I'll be adding screen shots, code examples, and process later. Here's some visual documentation:

V4.0 - LED Matrix work

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 05:31:00 +0000

As I'd sort of expected, I have decided that V4 will be higher-res. I hope it to be way higher-res, but we'll see. The plan for now is to use an Arduino board (that has been burning a hole in my project table) for the control. It has a pretty fast chip, 10MHz, so I'm hoping it'll be able to keep up with all my spinning about.

I got all the pieces in the mail that I'd need, had the Arduino, a couple LED matrices, and a couple matrix controller chips from Maxim-IC (MAX7221). Putting this all together is a heck of a lot harder than re-arranging the parts on the SpokePOV, but here goes.

V3.1 - Conclusions + Zen

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 05:38:00 +0000

Looking at the videos again, I'm a little frustrated and excited about the project. I do really like the weird Tron style and odd blips of mis-aligned lights. It has that great analog effect of old-futuristic movies that hasn't yet quite come to pass.

Believe it or not, but that odd blip doesn't happen in person, but seems like some frame-rate issue with the video. Documenting this is pretty hard, as many POV-ers will attest these things effect your eyes very differently than a camera's CCD. I've tried different long exposures, ISO/apertures, video settings and found some things that work pretty well. As I said too, I've accidentally made some very nice and surprising images along the way.

I think the V3.1 video part 1 starts to look quite a bit like the animation of the 3D model I tried to match. That alone is pretty promising. As I hoped to do I've learned a lot about vertical and radial resolution, and the RPM/FPS needed for the animation and Persistence of Vision, not to mention circuit design software, PCB manufacturing, built a 3D-to-2D to micro-controller design process, and made all that work together pretty well.

So, V4 and V5? I'm still trying to work out what resolution I think a very detailed 3D bonsai tree will need. I also should define what an acceptable first tree will do. Will it "grow" over time? Can that be spontaneous, or does it need to be pre-programmed? If it is generated by an algorithm, what outside forces can be incorporated into the process over time? I'd like a flexible development platform, a very hi-res LED array so I could concentrate on the programming end of that. I suppose those things will have to come along together.

This is a lot of progress, and I'm feeling pretty good about it. I'm also feeling like, other than a better 3D tree model for V3.1 to display and a slightly faster fan, I've reached the end of the V3 family. I'll likely begin work on V4, either in 3D or in written form next.

V3.1 - Video Documentation P2

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 05:19:00 +0000

Here's another video of the new 8 layer tree. This one has a diffusion over the LEDs, as the other one looked too much like little points of light, and didn't blend together like I'd hoped. This works better, but I'll have to find the right material and LED spacing eventually.

Sorry, the red/orange landing lights never came back on. Watch the other V3.1 video first and this one should make sense too.

V3.1 - Video Documentation P1

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 05:12:00 +0000

Justin was kind enough to weigh in on the previous videos. As I'd feared, the handheld video was pretty shaky and sort of disorienting. I built a little camera rig just so I could move around these models a little more smoothly. I'll have to put up a picture of that contraption as well. On to the new video...

Also, at Justin's inspired direction, I added those little red/orange LEDs to the base. They look like little landing lights, but are mostly there to keep the sense of orientation as I move the camera around the model. They worked well, except they kept shorting out during the shoot. Too rushed I guess.

V3.1 - Tree Model Testing

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 05:01:00 +0000

The 8 layer tree model finally uploaded and spinning. At first glance it didn't really look much more complete or detailed than the 4 layer tree did. I also thought the 3D model was pretty tree like at the time I modeled it, but now I'm less sure. I experimented with a different wheel shape, more donut like with a large center (hub), which had the effect of more consistent detail from center to edge of the B/W conversion.

I think it looked better than this spinning, so I'll have to shoot some more video too.

V3.1 - 3D Tree Model

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 06:20:00 +0000

I've built a pixelated 3D tree in 3D Studio Max for testing 2 boards back to back. The animation on the left shows the model and how it unwraps into the 2 flattened SpokePOV images. I'll upload those to the back-to-back boards and test out the better vertical resolution.

V3.1 - Double Board Assembly

noreply@blogger.com (Bus of the Future Blog) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 05:25:00 +0000

This is the new, higher res hardware setup. I didn't really know how this was going to work until I started populating (assembling) the second board. These are two identical boards, back-to-back, and offset vertically. When spinning, one board should end up making layers 1, 3, 5, and 7 and the other filling in the spaces should make layers 2, 4, 6, and 8. Here are the boards set up on the fan.

I should be able to create a 3D model of a new tree with 8 layers, and separate the interwoven layers into the 2 B/W images to upload to the boards. Here are a couple more photos to show the 2 boards back to back.

I got my hand in one of the long exposure shots, we'll say that's for scale.