Sketching with Hardware 2012 6/6 – GPS Box

In August, our workshop “Sketching with Hardware” took place for the 6th time. In 7 days, 12 students learnt to use electronic components, to create new creative user interactions and realized their own physical computing projects. The overarching topic for this course was ”Outdoor Electronics”. Again, at the final presentation the crowd had the chance to experience six extraordinary experience prototypes. During the following days, all projects will be presented on this blog. Today: Part 6, GPS Box! Have fun 🙂

When thinking of outdoors, one of the first things that came into our minds was GPS. We use it nearly constantly in our everyday activities – from locating your own position to finding the right directions to your goal. From this concept an idea started to form, and soon the GPS box was born.

What is it?

A box with a secret locked inside. The only way to reveal it is to bring the box to a specific location. Only then will the box open and allow you to access its contents.

The box lid is equipped with a distance meter (here the four LEDS), a needle and has a compass rose engraved on it. Once the box closes, the needle spins on itself and finally stops to point at the direction of the goal. As you walk, the less blink or turn off to signal when you are getting closer.

Overall, it is a very versatile object that can be put to several uses. One of them would be to use it for a sort of „inverses geocaching“, only instead of having to find a certain object, you have to bring the object to the location. Once you reach the destination, you can let to world know of your success, and then re-program the GPS coordinates for the next person to take up the challenge.

Sketching with Hardware 2012 5/6 – PEO – Personal Energy Orb

In August, our workshop “Sketching with Hardware” took place for the 6th time. In 7 days, 12 students learnt to use electronic components, to create new creative user interactions and realized their own physical computing projects. The overarching topic for this course was ”Outdoor Electronics”. Again, at the final presentation the crowd had the chance to experience six extraordinary experience prototypes. During the following days, all projects will be presented on this blog. Today: Part 5, PEO – Personal Energy Orb! Have fun 🙂

PEO is a little energy device that limits your computer usage time to a value generated from the distance you traveled with your bicycle in advance. It raises awareness for the amount of time spent in front of computers nowadays and forces its users to seek physical exercise in compensation for their „screen hours“.

The Idea

the concept poster

The excessive use of computers is a common problem in todays connected world. Many jobs require the use of personal computers throughout the work day and also our spare time is frequently spent at home in front of computers or similar technical devices, whereas our time spent on physical activities decreases. This can lead to a lack of social interaction and can ultimately cause health problems.

While it is not possible to simply reduce the time of computer use for anyone, e.g. computer scientists, a way of mitigating this problem is to find the right balance between computer use and physical exercise. However, as is generally known, regular sportive activities require a certain level of self-control, therefore our idea was to create something that supports people with keeping that balance between computer use and being outside and doing sports.

Sketching with Hardware 2012 4/6 – Energy Fight

In August, our workshop “Sketching with Hardware” took place for the 6th time. In 7 days, 12 students learnt to use electronic components, to create new creative user interactions and realized their own physical computing projects. The overarching topic for this course was ”Outdoor Electronics”. Again, at the final presentation the crowd had the chance to experience six extraordinary experience prototypes. During the following days, all projects will be presented on this blog. Today: Part 4, Energy Fight! Have fun 🙂

Energy Awareness

Nowadays fossile energy sources are exploited to the farthest extent and the need for alternative ways of energy production is urgent. The awareness of new and clean forms of energy is an important issue, that already the youngest members of our society should be given an understanding of. This is why we have developed a concept of achieving a higher energy awareness for children in a playful manner.

   

What is it?

Enery Fight is a game that increases energy awareness. It illustrates different possibilities to produce energy. The produced energy is used to manipulate the game board, which is a circle shaped acrylic glass panel, placed on top of the Engergy Fight box. To start the game you place a small ball in the centre of the board.

The two players battle each other by producing energy on the four sides of the box to get the ball into the hole on their side of the game board. The two ways to produce energy are wind, created by blowing into a wind wheel, and motion energy, by cranking a wooden wheel on the side of the box.

Sketching with Hardware 2012 3/6 – Environmental Jukebox

In August, our workshop “Sketching with Hardware” took place for the 6th time. In 7 days, 12 students learnt to use electronic components, to create new creative user interactions and realized their own physical computing projects. The overarching topic for this course was ”Outdoor Electronics”. Again, at the final presentation the crowd had the chance to experience six extraordinary experience prototypes. During the following days, all projects will be presented on this blog. Today: Part 3, Environmental Jukebox! Have fun 🙂

Environmental awareness

As long as anyone can remember our environment has been providing food, water and a space to live for all of us. However our behavior changed and nowadays the environment also is a very important energy supplier. With our project, called the EnvironmentalJukebox, we wanted to make people aware that our environment has capabilities we haven’t ever thought of. It can be used to be creative. Especially aspects referring weather can be used to control a machine we have created. Since music plays a big role in many people’s lives we thought it could be very interesting to connect music and environmental aspects. This is how our project emerged.

What is it?

The EnvironmentalJukebox is, as its name implies, some kind of jukebox. However it’s not a common one. Instead of letting the user choose a certain type of music or radio station, the EnvironmentalJukebox creates and changes music by itself based on four environmental parameters: wind, light, rain and temperature. This music consists of piano-chords and a drum-beat. Once one or more of the environmental parameters change, music changes accordingly. For example, if the speed of the wind increases, the speed of the music increases. If it begins to rain, music gets louder. Temperature is used to decide whether chords within a minor or major key should be played and the amount of light is crucial for the pitch of the tones. The more light is captured the higher is the pitch of the tones and chords.

Video:

Sketching with Hardware 2012 2/6 – W.A.M.P

In August, our workshop “Sketching with Hardware” took place for the 6th time. In 7 days, 12 students learnt to use electronic components, to create new creative user interactions and realized their own physical computing projects. The overarching topic for this course was ”Outdoor Electronics”. Again, at the final presentation the crowd had the chance to experience six extraordinary experience prototypes. During the following days, all projects will be presented on this blog. Today: Part 2, W.A.M.P- Where are my People? Have fun 🙂

What is it?

This years topics for the sketching with hardware course dealt with outdoor experiences. We chose the subtopic “distance” for our Prototype.

Two thoughts lead to this idea:

Korbinian experienced a situation, in which he had a partynight with a friend, whose wife tried to track his position via his smartphone and was worried, as the signal showed a place on a lawn.
Thomas on the other hand, thought of an utopic tool, which would be able to find the position of anything you are looking for and showing the spot with an interactive flying arrow in the sky.
Also the Idea was concepted for couples. Recently being in love with somebody makes you think of that person all the time. What is she/he doing? Where is she/he at the moment? The WAMP is a concept to fix the physical gap between two people by displaying the position of the partner, which could satisfy the emotional need of being close.
Pretty soon we made up our mind to use a weather vane to show a person´s position. Its normal task is to show the direction of blowing winds and cardinal directions. The WAMP shows where you will find your girl- or boyfriend or other people you are tracking via their smartphone or computer. It is designed as a decorative wind vane with special features, standing on your balcony or terrace.

A simple sketch we made for the prototype while planning:

Sketching with Hardware 2012 1/6 – TeamTwist

In August, our workshop “Sketching with Hardware” took place for the 6th time. In 7 days, 12 students learnt to use electronic components, to create new creative user interactions and realized their own physical computing projects. The overarching topic for this course was ”Outdoor Electronics”. Again, at the final presentation the crowd had the chance to experience six extraordinary experience prototypes. During the following days, all projects will be presented on this blog. Today: Part 1, TeamTwist! Have fun 🙂

We all know how to open a box, but what if the box doesn’t want to be opened?

You are geocaching and found the cache. It’s slightly open but every time you get close, the mysterious chest locks itself. As you look around you see some strange objects blinking. Soon you notice that each object is reacting with your moves but there are far too many objects to activate all of them at the same time on your own. So if you don’t have a partner with you, go home or look for one, because you are playing TeamTwist.

What is it?

When playing TeamTwist you have to interact with the strange objects, called widgets. To finally open the chest, you have to activate different widgets depending on the current level. After each level the chest opens itself a little bit further.

After twisting yourself more and more from level to level, the chest is finally willing to let you raise its treasure.

How does it work?

The game consists of the chest and several widgets.

The chest

In an old sparkling wine box in we placed two servos: One for lifting the lid and the other to lock the box. Our first prototype (as you see in the video) was just a shoe box. Furthermore the box is secured by a light barrier (ultrasonic sensor) which prevents people to approach it before the end of the game.

Praktikum 3D-Modellierung mit Blender

Das Praktikum „3D-Modellierung mit Blender“ bietet den Studenten die Möglichkeit die Funktionen über die dreidimensionalen Modellierung von Körpern mit der frei erhältlichen 3D-Grafiksoftware Blender kennenzulernen. Hierbei werden die Grundlagen von Modeling, Texturing, Lightning, Rendering und Compositing vermittelt und in einer kleinen, frei wählbaren Animation umgesetzt.

Im Folgenden werden die Ergebnisse aus dem Sommersemester 2012 präsentiert:

„Drums“ von Manuel Klette:

„Magic Clock“ von Claudius Böttcher, Cornelia Reithmeier:

„Kafkas Cat“ von Christiane Wölfel, Nicoleta Mihali:

„Quack“ von Irada Tews:

3D-Videos von Projektkompetenz Multimedia

Der Kurs Projektkompetenz Multimedia führt in die in 3D-Modellierung und Animation ein. Die Studenten beschäftigen sich mit den Grundlagen des Modelings, Lights & Shadows, Indirect Lighting, Shading, Rendering, Keyframe Animation sowie Dynamics. Die folgenden studentischen Ergebnisse wurden mit der Software Autodesk Maya 2012 erstellt.

Building Interactive Objects: Interactive Todos

Die Interactive Todos wurden im Rahmen des Praktikums Building Interactive Objects im Sommersemester 2012 erstellt. Die beteiligten Studenten waren Verena Lerch, Mikolaj Dadela, Christiane Woelfel, Marion Koelle und Maximilian Walker.

Unser Konzept erlaubt es, Aufgaben durch Interaktion visuell zu priorisieren. Dazu bewegt man die gezeigten Blöcke auf einer Oberfläche. Je nachdem welche Position ein Todo einnimmt wird es in den Farben rot, orange oder gelb beleuchtet, erledigte Aufgaben erscheinen grün. Jeder Block ist mit einem ATmega8-Microcontroller ausgestattet, der über Licht-Sensoren mit seinen Nachbarn kommuniziert und dadurch seine aktuelle Position ermittelt.

Idee und Enstehungsprozess sind auf der Webseite des Projekts dokumentiert.

Building Interactive Objects: Wahl-Bär-Rater

Im Rahmen des Praktikums „Building Interactive Objects“ fertigten wir einen animierten Teddybär, der Usern politische Fragen stellt und basierend auf den Antworten eine Wahlempfehlung ausspricht. Die Auswertung erfolgt dabei aus Daten des Wahl-O-Mat-Tools der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung.