Blitobot Research

Birdie Installation

2011-11-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

I haven't come up with a name for it yet, but I'm putting together an interactive video installation for the Lansing Media Theater Project (which may or may not have a new title these days). Professor Alison Dobbins gave me a prompt of making something with Boids, and I thought she was spelling it funny. Turns out, it's a flocking thing, and Processing has a demo patch built into its examples. I was up super early today, so I made a pretty solid start to the whole thing. Here's what happens:

Birds fly on the screen

They flock using this Boids stuff

Each bird is an instance of the Boid class, called by the Flock class, which is started in the main patch

They flap!

actually, it's just a picture of a bird that is alternately squished and not squished. :)

Three ways to interact with the birds so far

Whistle a descending third, and a new bird is born

Pure Data and Processing are talking over Open Sound Control, and Pd listens for a note in whistling range, then waits for a note somewhere between 2 and 5 half-steps lower. If it hears it, it tells Processing to make a new bird/Boid
There is also a tweet sound :)

Make a noise too loud, and the birds go away for a while all flustered

There's a decibel threshold in Pd that, when crossed, tells Processing that the birds are "scared" and the boundaries of the screen are removed, allowing the birds to disappear
You also hear a fluttering sound, as the general bird noise loop fades out

Wave something green in front of the camera, and you can herd the birds on the screen.

There is a grid made out of groups of the pixels from the camera.
Each group is checked to see if it is mostly green
If it is, it is recorded in an ArrayList
Then, a function checks how far the elements in the ArrayList go left, right, up and down, and draws a box around the whole thing (drawn as an ellipse on the screen).
That box is now an object that the birds avoid.

As I learn more about capturing video from my screen, I'll post more detailed things with pictures and such. Here's one!

New Job, Old Role?

2011-09-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

So, out here in Grand Rapids, I've been floating around a little for the past couple weeks, applying to too many places from bookstores to Guitar Center to coffee shops, and I finally got something! I'm teaching and fixing things at Grand River Music in Grand Rapids, so if you send your guitar or amp or anything there to have some electronics fixed in it/them, I'll likely be the guy doing it! I've been doing this kind of thing for a long time for friends (and family), so I probably won't break your stuff. :) There's a fun bench where I've worked so far too! Check it:

I'm really quite pleased with the whole situation. :) Maybe some fun stories of fixing will turn up here too! More soon!

And also (if this isn't enough of a plug already) here's more about them: grandrivermusic.com

Bookshelf Funtime

2011-09-09T08:26:00.000-07:00

My good friend and colleague built a bookshelf the other day. I don't know if we saved any money with this project, and we certainly didn't save any time, but we got a pretty sweet place to put our books out of it, and it has a special Wurlitzer cubby!

We also do lots of our projects together, and we agreed to time-lapse everything we possibly could. Here's one!

Mechanical Mower

2011-07-27T18:22:00.000-07:00

This was a fun project. Screwed the handle back on to this mechanical mower of my parents', and now we mow our lawn with it!

cueStick...

2011-07-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

It may be early to post about this, but my friend Dave and I have an idea. Numbers are nice inside the computer, but they're even better in a funny little box. With JeeNodes, some java and shift registers, you can get just that! This idea is more developed than that, I promise, but like I said, it may be early to post about this. Here are some pictures:

Washtub Bass!

2011-07-27T17:44:00.000-07:00

My friend Corrina and I made a washtub bass together. I was going to play it in a play (called the Grapes of Wrath, maybe you've heard of it?) with my friends Meredith, Linnea and Emily, but I forgot I had a thesis I had to finish and an opera to play in (oddly enough, also called the Grapes of Wrath!) and I was very disappointed, but the bass lived on! Here's how we made it:

I don't remember now, but I'm pretty sure I got most of my details from this website. These instructions are good too!

In fact, their directions are good enough, so here are some pictures instead. Lazy blogging!

First Show!

2011-07-19T19:13:00.000-07:00

So, I had my first gig! This is a short update, and you can see my set here on vimeo. Thanks to Wisaal, The Anatomy of Frank and Tim Lane at Scene Metrospace. More Soon!

New Audio Interface

2011-07-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to buy a new audio interface, with more ins/outs. I really just need one more than the two that I have, but I'm tempted to go all out and get this Focusrite Saffire Pro 40, but I'm waffling about it, because I'd love to use it with linux too.

(image from sweetwater.com)

More research to do, but I was reading a little about firewire audio devices with linux here. More soon!

qlist!

2011-07-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

[qlist] is a Pd object that I haven't tried before, and it will do exactly what I need (I hope and assume, as the help file has assured me as such).

Instead of "looping," I'm going to record a series of events in this [qlist] object, and establish that that is a thing, a duration of time, a measure, or whatever. It's not playing back audio, but more like making a little MIDI file, and playing it back, but without the crappy sound baggage. What I mean to say is that I'm recording the relative timing between me pressing this pedal, turning this knob, and saying this thing, and it will remember and repeat (and repeat and repeat if I want).

Let's see if it works!

Music Project

2011-07-05T18:59:00.000-07:00

I've lapsed for a long time, and a lot has changed. I'm out of school, and I'm out of things to do, except the thing that I've always wanted to do. That thing is to make music of my own and play it a lot. So, this is me changing and doing that. I'm moving away from the town I grew up in, writing new kinds of material, and making plans for logistics of this new project, and it's all very exciting.

You might wonder why I'm writing about it on my tech projects blog. I've been trying to think of a name for this solo project I'm starting, and it occurred to me that Blitobot Research isn't bad, and it might even be the truth. All the things I make on here are about me trying to link the different things in my life, and this music project will be techy indeed!

So, the content on this will shift a little bit, but not really that much. I'm guessing it will become more frequent though :)

ps. I just started a new website, and I'm trying to decide whether to keep it. Sorry if this moves there...

PS/2 Keyboard and Sanguino

2010-09-27T12:09:00.000-07:00

So, I got a couple new toys and have resumed work on the "pile of junk," as I like to call it. I ordered a Sanguino, two JeeNodes, a RBBB and a USB BUB kit. I was disappointed to find that communication with the USB BUB didn't work, so I'll have to check that out more tonight. The Sanguino is up and is in good shape though. I struggled with getting a PS/2 Keyboard to work with the Sanguino, but the PS2KeyboardExt2 library worked perfectly with a Bare Bones Board, so I'll just have to learn more about the difference between the pins and hopefully make it work for me.

I got the JeeNodes to try to do some wireless communication between an actor and a light board. I'll solder the kits together soon, and learn to use them. The bigger issue for me is learning about lighting board protocols, which may be regular MIDI, but I don't know yet. That'll be next weekend's project for sure. If anybody has some ideas/experience with that, let me know! Thanks!

That's about it. Being in school while trying to do projects like this is tricky, but I think it should work ok. Today is a writing/research day. See you!

Clave Metronome

2010-09-23T05:59:00.000-07:00

I did this a little while ago, so sorry for not posting earlier. My chronology is all messed up. ; )

So, I play piano in a salsa band at MSU, and it is my favorite thing to do. In learning about how to play the music and what this whole other world of rhythm was all about, I learned about Clave: the rhythm, the instrument and the word. I got one, I learned that it is tricky for me, and that I needed more of it in my life, in addition to needing a steady clave rhythm to practice with.
So I made myself a new metronome.

This was a fun project for me. It has one of Paul Badgers' Bare Bones Boards inside, as well as a Minty Amp kit, some buttons for changing the tempo, adding mambo bell and cascara and changing back and forth between son and rhumba clave. I have had some practice with using switches, potentiometers and lights with and Arduino, but making them make sound and steady rhythms, and then amplifying it so that it's loud enough to practice with a piano required some learnin'.

To get the Arduino to make sound, I used one of the pins that was capable of Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) and used it as an Analog Output pin. The three sounds (one sound for clave, one for cascara and one for mambo bell) are each really fast pulse (or square) waves that are only played for a couple cycles (high frequency for a very short amount of time). The three different sounds are different frequencies and different lengths. The sound of connecting the Arduino directly to the speaker worked ok, but wasn't very loud, so I tried to amplify!

I still need to read more about Audio Amplifier chips, but this Minty Amps kit worked real well for amplifying my signal a little. Although, with regular audio, I'm pretty sure there's an impedance problem somewhere or something, because it was very distorted. I wanted to put in some potentiometers for different volume stages (one control for dropping the signal between the Arduino and the Amp, and one between the Amp and the speaker). However, I either wired the pots incorrectly or they're broken, so they just fizzle out in the middle. I put in two bybass switches, one for removing each of the pots from the signal chain.

Anyhow, I made it and I use it for practicing now, which is great, because this is one of my only projects that I actually use regularly. Total cost ~ $35
:-)

evo-electro Conglomeration

2010-09-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

This is a new project for me, and I'm very excited about it. It'll be a pile of broken electronics that were compacted together and left to rot for decades, except instead of rotting, it all grew together and came back to life in a conglomeration of intermittent functionality and mis-mapping.

This is the thing so far. It is four Apple towers (G3 and G4) cut up and hinged together in a shifting but stable frame. With the changing position, the mapping of different input (answering machine buttons, computer and MIDI keyboards) will change to connect to different output (sounds in computer speakers, lights on different devices, flashing of computer monitors).

I have many goals with this project. One of the main ones is to spend as close as possible to no money and use entirely recycled material (except for the driving Arduino and rechargeable batteries).

What's next:

put the top tier on - likely to be the side panel to a G5 tower
hack all the electronics in the basement and take note of what input and output I have
start breaking and attaching things
probably have to collect more wire

Things to learn:

output from PS/2 keyboards
sending information over VGA to a monitor (that may be broken)
programming a Sanguino
how to make this look corroded without damaging my house or my relationship with my roommates

(click here to see a gallery of the project so far)

Mandola Pickup

2010-03-15T08:54:00.000-07:00

I got a new camera with the help of one of my good friends. This weekend, I also got a new motivation to document projects, so here are some pictures:

I was working on a pickup for my Mandola for a while. I was worried about putting anything on the body of the instrument, but then I gave in and just started gluing things on.

It's a piezo element from Radioshack, hooked into a tone/volume module that is identical to that which is in a Fender P-Bass. A couple weeks before, I had just done the same thing in my Lotus P-Bass, so I threw one in an Altoids tin, spray-painted it, and cut it up so that it would attach to my Mandola strap. It doesn't sound great, but it's better than nothing, and if I really want a good sound, I'll save up for a real pickup. Fun : )

Lapse, links, lots

2009-08-06T05:55:00.000-07:00

This is Nate, and it has been a little while. I'm starting my Masters at MSU in a couple weeks, and have started so many projects at the same time, I'm experiencing a bit of a bottleneck in my production of work. Among the many projects, a couple of them we're outlining on this other blog I have with some good friends at MSU:

http://folio2-avclub.blogspot.com/

Projects like a voyeuristic lobby recording button, general networking stuff, and of course, my robot ball project that has taken such a distant back-burner. Other projects include my friend Dave's Sampolin project, using graphite's excellent semi-conductive properties to make an analog controller for creating a software version of Laurie Anderson's Tape-violin thing; an installation piece that will go on my friend's wall soon(ish); and fixing all the electronic things that are broken in our new house.

With the existence of the other blog, I'll double-post between these two as appropriate, but I'm not sure how often it will be appropriate, so I'll just do my best to do a lot and document even more : )

Ears as drivers

2009-05-11T09:25:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this post is the result of a few things I hadn't gotten to work before. I don't know much about Java, so embedding this Processing applet in this blog is a big step for me. : )

This is me playing around with Processing to try to draw a picture to show my brother how I wanted to use amplitude information from the two mics on the sides of our ball project. Left is white, Right is red, and the difference between the length in the two lines makes the ball turn. It needs to stop listening when it gets too close, or when the difference is too small, and it will.

Processing uses very similar coding to Arduino, the hardware microcontroller system I like to use, so writing code in one gets me closer to having code in the other. : ) fun

Click on the window! (if it actually shows up, that is. :) ) clicking represents a sound happening in that field.

This browser does not have a Java Plug-in.

Get the latest Java Plug-in here.

Source code: wood_move3

My Girls with an accelerometer

2009-03-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

Last week, I finally got to play with an accelerometer for the first time. This accelerometer will tell the system when it's upright, and help it balance, or at least that's the plan. I need to spend more time with it, and with sequencing the reading and writing from the accelerometer and to the motor transistors, but so far I had some fun rigging it up with a Pd patch, using the new USB BUB board and latest BareBonesBoard, both from moderndevice.com.
ps. - I'm glad the USB BUB board exists now, for a nice easy way to get the USB connectivity I like for Arduino-Pd stuff, using a cable people could buy off the shelf, not like the old solution for BBBs, a TTY USB adapting cable that was sort of expensive and easy to hook up backwards.

Anyway, this video is what I did. Thanks for the code:
http://antipastohw.blogspot.com/2007/12/arduino-with-radio-shack-parallax.html
I changed it a little to give Pd messages I'm used to working with (I'm sure there are better ways to send this information serially, but this seems fast enough) and rigged it up to control the volume and playback speed of a loop of Animal Collective's "My Girls." Fun Fun : )

Bike chain

2009-03-17T06:53:00.000-07:00

I wanted to attach a bike gear to the main driving motor of the robot ball, and have it drive against a bike chain mounted around the inside of the ball. I learned about bike chain tools - used to break and mend bike chains to adjust their lengths and remove or replace bike chains - and took apart my old bike.

thanks: http://www.laseralignment.net/lasertips.html

I took it all apart, almost broke my dad's tool from using it incorrectly, and found the chain to be just what I need, although heavy. I may end up buying a plastic one, should this one be very much too heavy.

So, next I took apart the back wheel to try to separate the smallest gear from the rest, and found I should have done a little more research before so completely disassembling the back wheel. The gears aren't put together in a way that will facilitate my taking a single one very easily, so I'm going to just buy one, probably from smallparts.com *shrug*