Fun at the Mini Maker Faire!

Yesterday I had the pleasure to attend the Santa Cruz Mini Maker Faire to represent the Generative Art Studio, an independent study group that I participated in during the year. I had a really amazing experience learning about interactive generative art techniques during my independent study, and I made some cool pieces using the p5.js library in jsfiddle. My instructor signed us up for the Maker Faire so we could present our work, which turned out to be a really great experience and opportunity to show off my hard work!

I presented my generative dumb agents, which basically allowed users to generate geometric shapes on the screen that branch off into random directions, creating interesting patterns. It was fun to see people playing with something that I created and actually have fun with it. You can play with my generative dumb agents here!

 I also had a blast just being at the Faire and checking out all the "makers." It was a really inspiring experience, and made me wanna go out and just make some STUFF.  There was a very diverse collection of things at the faire, ranging from robots, an electric race car, to homemade jam and aromatherapy sand. Here were some of the most memorable:

http://www.bhencke.com/#/synthia-v2/

The Generative Art booth shared a room with Ben Hencke who made a super flashy and gorgeous LED Piano which was a blast to play with. I'm such a huge fan of the look of flashy rainbow LED lights, and matching that with a music-making piano made it even cooler. With this combination of sound and color, Hencke's intended to give listeners and players a sense of synthesesia.

UCSC Bioengineering students presented a Robotic Arm that responded to input from flex sensors in your own arm, allowing you to control it with your movements. It was a really cool example of what to do with flex sensors, and the little robot arm, albeit a little finicky, was impressive.

Idea Fab Labs presented an augmented reality sandbox, which used a kinect to measure the depth of the sand and dynamically change the projections onto it, allowing the user to mould and sculpt a sandbox environment with mountains, islands, and oceans.

Fab Labs also had a room with these gorgeous light fixtures that I really want as a decoration in my house. I also thought they would be really cool if they were made to be interactive, maybe by putting a motion sensor and dynamically changing the light and color patterns based on movement of people around it.

I was extremely fascinated by the work of Steamy Tech, who uses laser-cut wood to make intricate steampunk themed gizmos and gadgets. My favorite was this beautiful heart with turning gears inside.

All in all, the Maker Faire was an extremely rewarding and fun experience. There's also a HUGE bay area maker Faire event in San Mateo next month that I really want to go to to further fuel my desire to make, make, make!

3D Paper Simon Says: I'm an Arduino n00b

     I was really excited to be assigned to build a game interface prototype using the Arduino for my alternative controllers class. I've never really worked hands-on with an Arduino before, so I was pretty stoked to try it out. When I broke open my Arduino I was really intrigued by all the seemingly endless possibilities of tinkering that can happen with this thing.
     I started brainstorming and remembered from class that graphite could be used as a conductive material. I thought that was super useful, as drawing with pencil gives you the freedom to do a lot of things, and I'm just really fond of using pencil because I'm a doodler. I looked up various ways to use graphite as a sort of input to the Arduino and found that you can make a button out of graphite drawn on paper. This opened up many possibilities in my mind, so I started to explore further.
     I thought of creative ways to use paper in this case. Sure, you could have it laying flat and draw some buttons or something, but I wanted to approach it from a different angle. When I think of interesting controllers, I think of something you can hold and move around and dynamically manipulate. So I looked into 3D folded paper shapes and wondered what I could possibly do with them.

Cool shapes that totally aren't complicated to make at all

     So then I came up with the idea of having some sort of 3D shape made of paper with graphite sensors drawn on the opposite side of each face. Each face of the shape would map to a certain color, and the player would be prompted by LEDs which color(s) to touch in a given time frame (like a mix of Simon Says and Twister). I imagine it would get increasingly harder, and the player would have to touch multiple colors and avoid ones they aren't supposed to touch. Sounds relatively simple... in theory.

     

 As if my desk didn't have enough crap all over it already

     Of course I'm naturally drawn to the artsy crafty side of things so I decided to do that (*cough* easy) part first and cut out an octahedron shape, draw out the graphite "circuits"and then color coded them cuz I'm fancy or something.
     I'm just gonna say it now, I didn't actually end up getting this to work with the Arduino. The paper shape itself was a bit small and flimsy, and the jumper wires got a little cramped and it was a bit cluttered. But hey, it's just a prototype, sooo.... Learning experience, I guess.
     I then just decided to move on to prototyping the actual game interface. I wanted to start out by just getting the graphite touch input down. Seems simple enough, there's a tutorial online and everything.

me_irl

     Heh, well the whole thing ended up being way more than I bargained for, and really made me realize how much of a noob I am with Arduino, which was surprisingly very finicky and caused a lot of frustration. It started with me looking up capacitive sensors, trying to implement it, which resulted in an LED light that couldn't decide what it wanted in life (I mean who can blame it, amirite?) and me repeatedly banging my head into my breadboard and having multiple existential crises.
     Anyway, I kindof got capacitive sensors to work, but it ended up being SO sensitive that even having my phone or hand near the end of the jumper wire caused the LED to go on. So for a good hour I was sitting there wondering why the LED was CONSTANTLY on, then I picked up my phone to procrastinate on facebook or something I realized that the LED went off, which caused even more confusion.

finicky LED behavior in its natural habitat

     

     Don't get me wrong, the super sensitive jumper wire was super fun cause it made me feel like a wizard when I waved my hand at it and made it glow. Also, a part of me feels like this is some glitch that's unrelated to what I was even trying to do.

Summary of me during this whole experience

     Anyway, long story short, I have to admit defeat for tonight and probably start fresh tomorrow. At least I have a good idea now of what NOT to do, and a general direction of where to go. Hopefully my Arduino will be more cooperative.