© 2007 Julian. All rights reserved.
From a distance, the craftwork of prototyping speculative devices is really, really exciting to me. Thinking about design, electronics, construction, developing activated objects that actually work? That’s great. From 10 millimeters, under a jeweler’s headset with tiny, tiny 30 gauge … Continue reading
© 2007 Julian. All rights reserved.
So, the evolution of machinery has led to the eponymous “sleep” mode, or “sleep state” for digital devices. Our phones and computers and stuff — they can go to sleep. I think the first time I saw this (and was … Continue reading
© 2007 Julian. All rights reserved.
I call Time Warner, the provider of my cable modem line, to troubleshoot the cable modem. I call from my cellphone because I have a VOIP phone that, you know — isn’t working because the cable modem is out of … Continue reading
© 2007 Julian. All rights reserved.
When one thinks of “mobile computing” I think the knee-jerk meanings are to consider it to be desktop computing only with a smaller screen and a jammed up smaller keyboard. Suppose though you could start with the mobile part and … Continue reading
© 2007 Julian. All rights reserved.
I dunno, I was staring at the Slow Messenger and the power LED — your typical grasshopper green — was so bright and just staring at me and kind of giving me a headache. And I thought — that’s not about slow. And I thought about the drowsy white “sleep” pulse of my PowerBook and I was, like..I need something like that on this device. A slow, sleepy, drowsy pulse. And maybe the pulse will change at different times of the day or something.
Lucky for me I had attached the LED to one of the timer/comparator signals on the ATMega32 in the design.
That signal — PB3? Over there on the left side of the Atmega32? That has an “alternate” use as an output for the timer/comparator circuit. That means that it will output a digital signal if you tell it to based on an internal counter equalling (comparing to) a value you specify, or when a timer is done counting up or down. So, by knowing things like how fast the chip is running (8 megahertz in my circuit) you can start to derive how often this signal will get turned on and off. Pretty soon you’re doing pulse-width modulation, something this MCU has built-in facilities for. With PWM you can make an LED think that the voltage being supplied to it is different values. If you change the PWM (and the apparent voltage to the LED) you can get it to dim to varying degrees. Or do a gooey, drozy pulse.
Here’s the code that will do this on an Atmega32. I’m having trouble getting it to work on the Atmega324 (which appears to be a replacement for the Atmega32), but I’ll get that straightened out soon enough..
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <avr/io.h>
#include <avr/interrupt.h>
#include <avr/pgmspace.h>
#include <util/delay.h>
#include "a2d.h"
#include "uart.h"
#include "avrlibdefs.h"
#include "avrlibtypes.h"
/* define CPU frequency in Mhz here if not defined in Makefile */
#ifndef F_CPU
#define F_CPU 8000000UL
#endif
static char mPwrLedLevel = 0;
static void incr_pwr_led(void);
ISR(SIG_OVERFLOW0) {
incr_pwr_led();
}
ISR(TIMER0_COMP_vect) {
incr_pwr_led();
}
static char aDirection;
static void
incr_pwr_led(void)
{
//TIMSK = 0×03;
if(mPwrLedLevel == 0×20) {
aDirection = 1;
}
if(mPwrLedLevel == 0xE0) {
aDirection = 0;
}
if(aDirection == 1) mPwrLedLevel++;
if(aDirection == 0) mPwrLedLevel--;
OCR0 = mPwrLedLevel;
}
int main(void)
{
sbi(DDRB, PB3);
PORTB |= (1<<PORTB3);
for(int j=0; j<30; j++)
_delay_ms(32);
cbi(PORTB, PB3);
for(int j=0; j<30; j++)
_delay_ms(32);
sbi(PORTB, PB3);
for(int j=0; j<30; j++)
_delay_ms(32);
sbi(PORTB, PB3);
for(int j=0; j<50; j++)
_delay_ms(32);
TCCR0 |= (1<<WGM00) | (1<<COM01) | (1<<CS02);
// TCCR0A |= (1<<CS02) | (0<<CS01) | (0<<CS00);
// TCCR0A |= (0<<WGM02) | (1<<WGM00);
// TCCR0A |= (1<<COM0A1) | (0<<COM0A0);
TCNT0 = 0×00;
sbi(TIMSK, TOIE0);
sei();
OCR0 = 0×10;
int j=0×00;
while(1==1) {
_delay_ms(32);
}
} Continue reading
© 2007 Julian. All rights reserved.
Wow, what a bit of a learning experience this was. That chip is an Invernsense IDG300 gyroscope. $35 a pop. And its one of these “QFN” (quad, flat, no leads) style packages which basically makes it a pain to work with. I thought I could use this technique of dabbing a bit of solder on each of the pads on the printed circuit board and then put a bit of heat to the board with hot air or an iron on each pad. It “took” but there was no electrical continuity. What I think happened is that the big center ground pad took hold, but the other leads didn’t. It seems like it should have. The alignment was good after eyeballing it. Anyway, it didn’t.
So, after taking the thing on and off a few times because of some shorts I found across a capacitor and crap, I decided to have a go with a bit of solder paste. That was something I was trying to stay away from because the paste is messy and difficult to apply to such small leads (.25mm or .01 inch). This is what you really need a stencil for, I guess.
I dabbed a bit, messed it up, dabbed some more, cleaned up, etc. I basically just put paste on the leads that are actually connected to something. There are lots of non-connects, evidently for factory calibration of the device. With the solder paste on, I placed the chip, messed with it for a bit to try to get it aligned good, which is a bit nerve wracking because I’m trying to avoid accidentally spreading the solder paste around and everything. Finally, it looks good and I put some hot-air to the area. It sort of works when I check the electricals, so I try again, finally getting something. One of the devices seems a bit out of kilter — the rates on one axis when its static seems off, but maybe that can be compensated. We’ll see.
Power, but who knows how well it works? The MCUs are fine, power is fine, the Bluetooth radios there are fine. Haven’t had the nerve to check the gyros though..Those things came on and off so many times, I toasted the board a bit.
Technorati Tags: Near Future Laboratory
© 2007 Julian. All rights reserved.
Finally, something to show for this “Slow Messenger” project, a playful interface for instant messaging. I’ve gotten all the hardware bits cobbled together and most of the firmware. Now I’m working on learning how to tie in AOL Instant Messenger so that messages can be delivered to the device. Fortunately (I think) AOL has opened their API somewhat. You get some sort of key and then can create your own IM applications based on their protocol and network. I don’t know how well this works, but I suspect if it works well-enough, a preposterous projects like this should be able to make good use of it.
I found one little unexpected design glitch — the LED driver (MAX6953) and the EEPROM I’m using (AT24C1024) have the exact same ‘default’ I2C address (0×50). I stumbled across this while trying to debug why the EEPROM didn’t seem to work, even after an electrical test and crap. You can typically hard-wire the chip to take on one of another possible addresses. On the AT241024 you just wire the A1 pin to either GND or VCC and set the A1 bit of the device address either low or high. The MAX6953 has a similar deal, only a larger matrix of possible different addresses, probably because the chip will typically be found in systems with lots of MAX6953s ganged together to drive large LED displays. In my case, it’ll be easier to make some small hardware changes to the Slow Messenger display board than it’ll be to change the AT241024, which is on a generic Flavonoid board that I want to keep as identical as possible to the other one’s to make managing the firmware easier.
Strange, but I thought that I got closer to having the real-deal I’d understand more about why I’ve committed so much time to doing it. But, I’m no where near understanding why I’m doing it or what it means. This may be beyond the near future and somewhere from another planet.
I heard someone confuse the Near Future Laboratory with corporate R&D. Like, essentially assuming that what I was doing was stuff just around the bend that someone at some corporate lab or product design operation is probably better suited to develop. Whatev. The Near Future Laboratory is the other near future — the one no one in a corporate lab would really think about because the demands of commerce minimize risk, don’t even scratch their heads if the perceived market is too small, and only think about what can be realized to help make next year’s earnings look good. Just to clarify.
Technorati Tags: Near Future Laboratory, slowest instant messenger
© 2007 Julian. All rights reserved.
Aaron Meyers deployed this turn of phrase “human joystick” during his final presentation for the course I taught this semester — “Design and Technology for Mobile Experiences.” He’s been working hard mostly on his thesis project, Torrent Raiders, but for my class he worked on programming a J2ME version of the MobZombies game that’s been percolating around the Interactive Media Division since 2002.
I’ve been interested in expanding the kinds of interfaces we have to digital worlds, and doing so to explore what computing can mean, besides the kind of computing we assume computing means. My speculation is that, to a significant degree, the “point of entry” defines and shapes what we imagine computing is, and it will not become much more than what it is so long as our point-of-entry are a flat visual display, a small squares of plastic that we push about 2 millimeters, a ball of plastic we swish around a flat surface. It boggles me when I think that this basic setup has been around, little changed, for 15 years, and much longer if you factor the computer mouse out of the framework. Boggles me.
And it’s not for lack of effort. The Wii-style wand concept has been bandied about at any number of professional/academic research contexts. Ten years ago a music conductor’s baton was the concept behind a project that, initially, was designed to control electronic music using conducting gestures. The researcher, Teresa Marrin, became so enamored with the possibility of gesture as a computer-human interface that she saw it not only as a device that could be used as a “new instrument on which to perform computer music” but also as “a model for the design of new interfaces and digital objects.” The interesting thing is that it’s more than a 3D mouse in many regards — it’s usage context is explicit in the object. The hardware is remarkably prescient:
The sensors on the baton include an infrared LED for positional tracking, five piezo-resistive strips for finger and palm pressure, and three orthogonal accelerometers for beat-tracking. Both the infrared sensor and the baton send separate data streams (including values for absolute 2D position, 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis orientation, and surface pressure) via cable to the tracking unit, which converts the signals to the computer.
Over the last month or so, I’ve been constructing a sensor prototype that would turn the human into a human joystick for the MobZombies game. It combines a 2-axis gyroscope and 3-axis accelerometer, a microcontroller and a Bluetooth radio to transmit the data to the game display device, a mobile phone. The motivation here is two fold. First, investigate what a mobile game can be, that evokes both traditional playground style pre-digital action. Second, set up a baseline experiment for how computing can move away from the fixed office desk and make use of human body movement as an interface.
If you haven’t seen the “trailer” for MobZombies, I recommend checking it out.
(I’ve always wanted to make one of these specimen style graphics, with the ruler and callouts? You know?)
When I first cobbled the sensor together, I was hoping to use a magnetic compass like the previous version of the game controller used. It was a bit too sensitive to the RF energy created by the Bluetooth radio and I couldn’t easily find a way to separate the two without making a large design or diminishing the capabilities of one or the other. So, I turned to a MEMS gyroscope by InvenSense — the IDG300, which is a fast little gyro. I ran some quick tests which pretty much showed me that it was plenty fast. In fact, I could probably even go slower and maybe use a lower-end unit and save a few scheckles. I quickly cobbled together a bit of code bolted onto Aaron’s J2ME prototype. Turning motion is spot-on, which was a welcome surprise.
The MobZombies human joystick style interface is fun and suggestive more than it is a tectonic shift in how we interface with our devices. But, this style of interface is coming — it’s already here in some contexts. Nokia has introduced the 5500 Sports Phone with integral tri-axis accelerometer. I’ve heard tell of mobile phones that use the camera to detect and interpret motion by computing changes to the visual field. Etc.
MobZombies is a baseline experiment because I’m actually somewhat more interested in how very broad movement can become an interface to what I imagine would be a very different kind of computing than what we have today. Broad as in extended gestures beyond semaphore antics. Why? I would like to re-interpret human activities as fodder for computational expression. But this requires shifting the general notion of what computation is, which will require more than words. It will require some designed objects that express this shift through perhaps what some will see as peculiar usage scenarios.
Why do this? Why shift what computing means? Part of that answer comes from a sense that there must be much more to what “computing can become” than smaller or faster or cheaper. But, specifically in this case, my reason for thinking and doing this is because of this thing that boggles me — that the interface for the instrument that dramatically refashioned the ways in which humans make culture — whether entertainment, leisure, maintaining and acquiring social relationships, waging war, circulating knowledge, knitting together the fabrics of societies — the whole smash..that interface is set up to make you sit down and punch little plastic squares..at best. At worst, just sit down and look at a screen. I mean..it feels incredibly protozoic. There must be something beyond that computing can become. Why hasn’t that next bit come to pass? Why is “computing” so instrumentalized and so sedentary in this way?
I like to think about an entirely revitalized notion of “mobile computing” that isn’t about a small phone with a relatively powerful computer on which you’re able to run spreadsheets while you’re out and about. I’m wondering about a kind of mobile computing that puts more emphasis on the “mobile” part of that framework, where motion, in the broadest sense, is the computational activity.
———————
1. Teresa, M. Possibilities for the digital baton as a general-purpose gestural interface CHI ’97 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems: looking to the future, ACM Press, Atlanta, Georgia, 1997. Continue reading
© 2007 Julian. All rights reserved.
No, that isn’t an historical photo of children playing MobZombies..but it may as well be. MobZombies is being featured on the Processing.org web site..that’s pretty cool. I’ve started helping out on the project’s evolution, mostly in the area of lowering the cost of the device. This is important. I think it’s a very simple and pretty brilliant kind of user interface that really strongly suggests one way in which electronic games can get out of the Protozoic and into something much more like traditional playground-style play. I also think it could be a great test-bed for research in that area of physical electronic play or whatever you want to call it. Play that mixes the idioms of the playground and the world of digital screens. This isn’t quite Offline Gaming, but something in between the Wii and Offline Gaming.
Why? Not because I hate regular normal video games. I like to grumble about them, and about 90% of them aren’t particularly interesting to me. But so is about 90% of most media I’d say, so it’s not like I’m hating on games in particular.
No, it’s because there are a kind of electronic game I would really enjoy playing and, like..I figure I may as well think about and build those, if only to sate my ambition to create something that I find fun and that I think would actually produce some real impactful change. Physical play is not only fun, it’s generally agreed by everyone to be important for reasons of social development and to have a healthy, fit body.
So, related — I heard David Elkind on one of LA’s local NPR shows yesterday. He had some things to say that weren’t surprising based on his thorough-going arguments about childhood development. But, still — I found it interesting to hear his emphasis on a balance of activities that are about play in the traditional, skinned-knee variety, as well as those of the new 2nd life world of networked social interaction. His new book is “Power of Play”, which I’m looking forward to reading.
For a recent paper submission, I came across this from the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, which I thought was long defunct after I stopped hearing about that fitness test we did in 5th grade where you could win a cool patch if you got up in the whatever..95th percentile. (I never made it, although I tried as hard as I could.) It’s called Taking Steps Toward Increased Physical Activity: Using Pedometers To Measure and Motivate (President’s Council on Physical Fitness), which resonates with all of the step-counting programs out there. It’s cool. Step-counting and pedometers still feel a bit like..low res. What are kids going to want, that’s cool and vibes with their sensibilities around high-res electronic games?
By the way, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is committing $500 million over the next five years to fight childhood obesity. Their initial grant calls in the first two years are not quite appropriate to the kinds of projects described here — more instrumented research that gives something to people to try and does measurement of results and such all. But, the topics for which they’re soliciting proposals is still pretty interesting for anyone doing research in this area, such as perception of facilities for fitness and exercise, e.g. playground and recreational facilities.
Technorati Tags: pervasive electronic games, play
© 2007 Julian. All rights reserved.
Ideasonair.net is fantastic. It’s like an idea a day. It’s fantastic to see project ideas shared and documented this way. I wish I found more of this, just little sprinkles from a project notebook, shared and documented electronically. Continue reading
© 2007 Julian. All rights reserved.
Trying to come up with some "log line" style idioms to describe the whole vector of near future research I’m doing around game gestures that elongate the scales of motion, time and contact (proximity, touch, etc.) that electronic games have completely shrunk down to nil. There’s definitely a trend towards considering stretching these out a bit — the Wii, Warioware, Teku Teku Angel, Nike+, MobZombies. How far can you go? Can there be "offline gaming" where the screen disappears to the point of it not even being necessary? Where you sort of ambiently know that you’re gaming in the sense that your actions and activities "offline" will register in the game world once you get back to your normal human computer later? Can you still be gaming while you’re doing a run to the market, without being consciously and actively "in" the game while doing the grocery shop? But still, knowing in the back of your mind that, hey, cool! I’ll get my shopping done and probably get a +2 power up!
What’s the language and name for something like that?
* Hands-Free Gaming
* Offline Gaming
* Off-Screen Gaming
Evolution In Game Gestures?
How far can you go with a game gesture? Can shopping at the Farmer’s Market become an interface to an offline game, such that my action and activity while shopping powers-up my electronic game avatar while I’m away from it? Is our imagination open to the idea of gaming..even while not in front of a screen? Can you keep it in the back of your head that "stuff" in the online game world will be affected by your activities in the offline world? How will that change our perception of activities offline? How will it affect our attention to what’s actually happening around us? What will it feel like to know you’re gaming even though you’re not twiddling keys on your mobile phone, nor looking at its little postage stamp screen? How about this — you’re not even networked! Everything is stored up and then uploaded to the mothership later, when you’re back home ready to be an online agent again. You get to participate in what’s going on in 1st life, all the while knowing in the back of your head that your actions get to become something valuable in 2nd life!
The last couple of months has been an investigation of what this could be, through a mix of mostly technology craftwork with the Flavonoid project. Some notes, scribblings and sketches, too, but mostly construction of a theory object that I hope will help me answer these questions perhaps more expediently than head-scratching alone. We’ll see how it goes. Flavonoid came to life yesterday, so that’s promising!
Technorati Tags: Near Future Laboratory, near-future, Offline Gaming, pervasive electronic games, play
© 2007 Julian. All rights reserved.
Title
An API for Durable Affinity: Engineering Interfaces That Matter
Short Title
Why I’ve been engineering time, motion and touch sensors
Summary
In the era of an “Internet of Things” design for interfaces between humans and devices becomes increasingly important. The pervasive reach of the digitally networked world means it is likely that “things” — computational objects — will play an increasingly consequential role in the establishing, maintaining and knitting together networked social formations. It is even conceivable to imagine that these sorts of things may themselves become lively, engaged social actors. How do we want to interface with these networked objects, and what sort of interface semantics would move computer-human interaction design out of the often awkward, frustrating Proterozoic era we currently inhabit, into a more habitable, lively, human-scaled era for computer-human interfaces?
Abstract
This paper is an explication of a theory object constructed to develop a computer-human interface syntax called “durable affinity”. Durable affinity describes a kind of semantic interface between a computational device and a human that effects control over the device, but through less typical, instrumental mechanisms. Durable affinity interface elements consist of real-time, embodied motion and touch. These elements are elongated in degree. Time scales are in the range of minutes to days, while embodied motion is measured in degrees of sustained activities and touch moves into the degree of holding rather than momentary contact. By using “human-scaled” interaction elements — real-time, embodied motion, and touch — durable affinity interfaces are an attempt to establish a niche of ambient, paced, calm computational environments.
In this experiment, three primary application programming interfaces (APIs) are developed for the purposes of investigating the creation of “durable affinity” — meaningful device-human interfaces that have more aesthetic semantics than typical instrumental device-human interfaces. These three APIs are real-time, motion and touch. The theory object is composed of a small, portable computational device designed and built by the author. The device contains interface technology for these three APIs. In effect, the device is a platform for experiments in durable affinity interfaces. By connecting the device to, for instance, a small microcomputer, the elements of time, motion and touch can be accessed as interface components. Essentially, the platform becomes analagous to a typical interface platform such as a computer mouse, only rather than using horizontal motion and button clicks, the platform uses time, three-dimensional movement, and touch as components of the interface syntax.
To further the semantics of durable affinity, these three APIs are elongated beyond what many computer human interfaces consider rational, or useful. In the durable affinity context, real-time is measured in days rather than milliseconds; motion is measured in sustained, body-based activity such as a long walk or hours at sport rather than the twitch of one’s wrist; touch is measured in the degree one would find with holding hands, rather than momentary contact found in typical instrumental computer interfaces.
For the purposes of this experiment, the device platform described above is used to create an email message receiving device to help explicate aspects of the durable affinity concept. Contained within the device is an email message sent from a significant other to the device’s human. The message very slowly reveals itself over a period of days if the device’s human creates an affinity relation with the object. In order to unlock and reveal the message, presumably a message with some semantic weight, the device’s human must hold it for periods of time as if it were a treasured gift, and bring it along while engaged in routine activities like going to work or shopping for groceries.
By deliberately creating such an enduring, sympathetic interface between a computer and human, this investigation finds ways to wrap a richer set of human-scaled semantics — beyond pure instrumentalities — around computational devices.
Motivation
The goal of this project is to investigate ways of establishing a positive historical relationship with objects by inscribing them with a level of meaning attuned to the register of human emotional sensibilities. There are a range of motivations for such a goal. Such motivations include: establishing lasting associations with things so as to avoid a culture of disposability; finding areas in which an increasingly crowded, fast-paced information space can have corners of calm, slow, ambient experiences; establishing niche areas of aesthetically and emotionally rich digital networked interactions.
References
Chapman, J. 2005. “Emotionally Durable Design: Objects, Experiences and Empathy”, Earthscan.
Deschamps-Sonsino, Alexandra. Position Paper presented at NordiCHI 2006 workshop “Near-Field Interaction and the Internet of Things”, Oslo, Norway. URL (accessed December 2006): http://www.designswarm.com/NordiCHI_asonsino.pdf
Weiser, M. and Brown, J. S. 1997. The coming age of calm technolgy. In Beyond Calculation: the Next Fifty Years, P. J. Denning and R. M. Metcalfe, Eds. Copernicus, New York, NY, 75-85.
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