Hack a Day » visualization

Wiimote controlled Ruben’s tube

Jakob Griffith — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:29:02 +0000

While we could be content following our “kiddie d-day” as [Caleb Kraft] suggested. We know you can’t continue such an awesome Friday without trying to blow yourself up first.

This Wiimote Rubens’ tube caught our eye. A PVC Aluminum irrigation pipe is drilled with holes and propane is pumped through. A speaker on one end creates changes in pressure and a neat light show follows suit. [ScaryBunnyMan] went further though, with a collection of software and a Wii Remote he “plays god” controlling the music, and thus, the fire. Check out a fun video after the split.

[Via Make]

Filed under: digital audio hacks, wii hacks

Orientation aware camera

Eliot — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 19:01:56 +0000

[Andrew Magill] just added his Orientation Aware Camera to the Hack a Day Flickr Pool. It uses a 3-axis magnetometer and 3-axis accelerometer. He didn’t want to spend too much effort on the USB side so he picked up USBMicro’s U421. It’s a fairly well documented preprogrammed microcontroller for USB. He later regretted this; his final sample rate was only 5Hz because of all the overhead. Using the positional data the, webcam image can be corrected for any sort of shaking. [Andrew] took this one step further by using OpenGL and stitching all of the video frames together live into a full panorama. Be sure to watch his excellent video demo embedded below.

Posted in portable video hacks

Music and visual arts at The Last HOPE

Benjamin Eckel — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:40:00 +0000

[Peter Kirn] from Create Digital Music has an article up highlighting many of the great music and visual performance pieces planned for The Last HOPE on Friday night. If you are around New York and not accustomed to hacking conferences, this could be a great excuse to go check it out. Here are some of our favorite projects.

In the field of visuals, [Joshue Ott] and [Ezekiel Honig] are scheduled for an exhibition. [Ott] is best known for authoring superDraw, an amazing app used for generating visuals for music. The above video shows superDraw in action. [Honig] will provide his usual brand of warm and noisy ambient soundscapes.

Representing the 8-bit scene, [Paris] (video above) and [No Carrier] are also scheduled to attend.

[Michael Una] will also be on hand to showcase his live looping and robot assisted performances. The above video shows one of the robots he will be performing with. This robot was built around the Highly Liquid MIDI kit.

Pulse, the emotional visualization organism

Juan Aguilar — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:05:00 +0000

[Markus Kison] built a device called Pulse, which is part art installation and part data visualization tool. What the emotional visualization organism called Pulse actually does is scan new posts on Blogger.com blogs for synonyms of keywords related to 24 distinct emotions from eight emotional groups. A red cone in the center expands when keywords are detected, in effect acting as a mood indicator for Blogger.com blogs.

The 24 distinct emotions are based on [Robert Plutchik]‘s psychoevolutionary theory of emotion, and the device itself is built from a glass case, various servo motors, and custom controller for the servos. This is a compelling idea, but we wonder whether it scans for modifying words or just the keywords alone. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense to have the sadness region expand drastically if many people simultaneously post the sentence “I’m not sad at all.” Video embedded after the break.

[via information aesthetics]