Keyboard Pants

May 11, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 44 Comments

kbpants

[Zach] sent us a link to his keyboard pants. Frankly, we were astonished, not only by his craftsmanship, but by the fact that we were working on a pair ourselves. Admittedly his are much better looking and ours will probably never be finished. The inspiration for both his and ours, was this sloppy version. [Zach’s] pair have been cut in half, and he never really found a convenient way to reconnect the two halves, so only the left works. Watch this video to see him playing some Tetris in his awesome shorts.

Mud Tub: A Tactile Computer Interface

May 11, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 12 Comments

mud

[Tom Gerhardt] has made this very interesting mud interface for a computer. Follow the link to see a video of it in action. It appears as though he’s using a laser grid of some kind to establish elevation. We might be way off on that though, there aren’t any details on the construction. He does mention that it is an open source hardware and software project, so maybe the details are available on request. In the video you can see it running as a projection surface where people are interacting with items directly on the mud. You can also see it being used as an external input device. People play Tetris using it in that example.

UPDATE: [Moon] reports from the ITP show that the tub has a 16×12 grid of generic pressurs sensors on the bottom. These feed into a MacBook Pro which is projecting on the surface. Despite the sparse grid, [Tom] says he gets good resolution by interpolating between sensors; it can detect a resting hand pivoting on the surface.

Tangible, Changeable, Multitouch Controls

May 1, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 17 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smai_Z_galE]

iPhones and iPod touches have many advantages over the plain iPod. Have you ever wished you could advance tracks without looking though? That is a perfect example of where the current display/ input trends are lacking. There is no tactile feedback. [Chris Harrison], a Ph.D student at Carnegie Mellon has been working on an alternative.

His displays are rear projected and multitouch like many of the other multitouch systems we’ve seen. However, his also offer tactile feedback by changing their physical shape. Much like a vac-u-form, he is using vacuum to deform a flexible surface over different shapes. Not only are they able to do simple 2 state systems where you have smooth, then vacuumed, they can also do a third state by pressurizing the inside of the display. You can see several variations in the video.

Human Powered Electric Instruments

April 28, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 21 Comments

music

[Noah] tipped us off to his work with Physically Engaged Electronic Instruments. He is building instruments, that while being electronic, require physical action to drive them. In the video after the break, you can see an example, in the form of a polka. The part that they’re holding (print head?) is attached to a generator which powers the instrument. The effect makes the instrument much more like a traditional stringed instrument that must be strummed. We can easily also imagine an interface similar to a concertina or accordion being functional. There are schematics available on his site in the research reports section, but you’ll have to dig through a pdf or two to find them. We would love to see a breakdown of the instruments and their components in a more accessible form.

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Electrostatic Computer Interface

April 28, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 24 Comments

[vimeo=4366452]
[Justin] sent in his 1st place winning project from Northeastern’s Electrical Engineering Senior Design Capstone. It’s an interface that uses electrostatics to detect your hand position above it. As you can see in the video, it has decent resolution and can detect position on all 3 axes. When they uncover it, you can see the sensors arranged in a grid. They point out that each sensor isn’t just like a button, but rather detects a range of motion. They are using a pic 18×4550 to handle the sensors, which then communicates to the PC via USB. This could be pretty useful for musical performances as well as an alternative interface for people who can’t use a mouse.EO

Analog Audio Recorded On A Floppy

April 24, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 33 Comments

floppy_audio

[Jeri ellsworth] of fatmanandcircuitgirl.com has made an audio recorder out of a floppy disk and an old tape recorder. She’s able to record 15 seconds of audio directly to floppy disk. In the video after the break, she explains how it works, and why you hear the creepy reverb effect. The next step is to run this as a pedal effect for stage music, and she even mentions doing a larger hard drive version with the ability to seek tracks.

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Condenser Microphone Building

April 22, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 28 Comments

mic

Browsing around today, this project caught our eye. Mainly due to the visual similarity to, well, personal massagers. As it turns out, it’s a home made studio condenser microphone. We would generally prefer to link directly to his personal page, that has a slightly more in dept write up, but it has popups and pop unders, so enter at your own risk. Generally condenser mics require phantom power to make the magic happen, but he has included a circuit to run them off of 9v batteries. We’ve done condenser mics before, but this seems a bit quicker and dirtier.