Auch im letzten Sommersemester durfte das Blockpraktikum „Sketching with Hardware“ nicht fehlen. Zwölf Studierende tauchten ein in die Welt der Elektronik und bauten sechs tolle interaktive Prototypen. An dieser Stelle finden Sie eine Zusammenfassung der Projekte. Sollten Sie sich für das Praktikum selbst oder ausführliche Projektbeschreibungen interessieren, besuchen Sie das eigene Blog von Sketching with Hardware.
Das Thema in diesem Jahr war „Reduce, Reuse, Recycle“ und eigentlich ziemlich simpel: Nimm dir etwas völlig Unbrauchbares, Altes und Kaputtes und verwandle es ein etwas völlig Neues und Zweckentfremdetes. Haben wir Ihr Interesse geweckt? Dann auf zu den Projekten:
The Real Dropbox
The Real Dropbox is a interactive scanning device directly connected to the users dropbox account. Initially the concept suggested further functionality such as implementing the ability to make phone calls using a skype account and a earphone. The goal was to produce something out of an idea, that could indeed be useful to someone. Even if it was only ourselves.
DJ Teddy
Fulfilling this year’s topic „Reuse, Reduce, Recycle“ we searched for some old, used stuff and found three things: An old teddy to reuse, a shopworn MP3-Player to recycle and finally (to reduce the amount of junk in our homes ;-)) an unused step machine, but what to do with those parts? Our first thoughts were „everybody likes music, everybody loves teddies and of course everybody would go crazy seeing his teddy dancing to his favourite music while motivating him with a step machine”. So our idea was born, a music playing teddy or as we named it: „DJ Teddy“. Some additional special effects should allow it to become the perfect entertainer on every party. In the end the final result surprised us and I promise, it will surprise you, too.
Melody Bakery
This project, „Melody Bakery“, was made from an old toaster. We equipped it with an Arduino Mega, took advantage of the toaster’s convenient, useful physique and transformed it into something totally different with completely new functionalities: A MIDI sequencer loop station, aka. „Melody Bakery“. This device can read a set of eight notes, making up two four-four times at the range of seven notes adding up to one whole octave. Furthermore, you can feed the toaster with a set of an instrument which the notes are to be played with and a background beat to make the produced music loop more enjoyable and usable for playing along with e.g. the bass or the guitar. The notes, instrument, and background loop can then be sent to an audio program on a connected PC.
Gameboy 0.5 beta
First of all, we needed something to work with. It was pretty clear that it would be most fun to take an old thing – whatever it would be – and make it behave in an unusual way. Luckily, we found this at a flea market: It says oscilloscope on it and was once used in medicine for graphing the human pulse. The oscilloscope consists of two main parts, the left side holding a revolving paper roll, a spring and mechanics to move the paper stripe. „Gameboy 0.5 beta“ – our idea of how gaming might have looked 100 years ago. We built an arcade game for the advanced. You don’t play one level, you play two. At the same time. With a joystick. The two needles are arranged vertically, so the game is split into an upper level and a lower level. The upper level is always the same, collect the golden coins by going over them and loose one each time you crash into a wall. The y-axis if the joystick directly maps to the position of the needle.
Walkman Remote
The idea we have chosen for our project started with a walkman: many of us have one at home and it is hard to throw it away, because it often has good childhood memories attached to it. On the other side a walkman has all controls that are needed to control a music player (Play/Pause, Next/Previous Song, etc.) so our plan was set: let’s build a remote for your computer’s music player that is inside an old walkman. It should contain all the basic functions needed for that: play/pause a song, switch between songs and adjust the volume.
The Workout Orb
The Workout Orb (formerly: Weather Orb Muscle Cool Trainer) is a device that allows you to keep track of the progress in your workout (such as lifting weights) as well as to improve its quality. It consists of a wristband worn near the elbow that measures the rotation and muscle activity of ones arm. It then sends this data to the Arduino and thus triggers the feedback in the second component, the actual orb. This component cosists of a translucent orb that is filled with water, which, when turned on, is nebulized to form mist. It is then illuminated by LEDs to give visual feedback. The orb also harbors a small piezo element that additionally allows feedback in the form of sounds an melodies.
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