Hardware Hacking : Interactive Devices

There’s a growing grass-roots movement of people who are taking part in the hitherto hermetically sealed world of interactive device design. No longer are you limited to products available at your local dealer; from circuit bending to microcontrollers the open source hardware movement brings you more™.

MAKE Magazine exemplifies the spirit of this movement with its open approach to sharing knowledge. Along with providing great information resources, MAKE has an online store where they provide hardware and supplies for people ready to get into hardware hacking. We recently bought a couple Arduino kits from MAKE magazine:
Getting Started with Arduino Kit
Arduino Projects Pack

The Arduino is basically a tiny little computer which can be easily programmed and used to build the interactive device of your dreams. You write programs for it on your computer and then load them to the Arduino via USB. Once the Arduino is programmed, it becomes a stand-alone device which does whatever you program it to as soon as you turn it on.

Making Sound with the Arduino

I had some ideas about how to make sound with an Arduino, but in the end I didn’t have to go through too much trial and error thanks to an article called Arduino Sound Part 2: Hello World, Created by David Fowler of uCHobby.com

In David’s article he shows how to make a very simple program and circuit that will turn an Arduino into a sound generator.

I copied David’s code into the Arduino IDE, with just one change; I wanted to use output pin 13 whereas David had written his code to work with output number 9.

Here’s the original code:

//Arduino Sound Hello World
//Created by David Fowler of uCHobby.com
//Define the I/O pin we will use for our sound output
#define SOUNDOUT_PIN 9

void setup(void){
//Set the sound out pin to output mode
pinMode(SOUNDOUT_PIN,OUTPUT);
}

void loop(void){
//Generate sound by toggling the I/O pin High and Low
//Generate a 1KHz tone. set the pin high for 500uS then
//low for 500uS to make the period 1ms or 1KHz.

//Set the pin high and delay for 1/2 a cycle of 1KHz, 500uS.
digitalWrite(SOUNDOUT_PIN,HIGH);
delayMicroseconds(500);

//Set the pin low and delay for 1/2 a cycle of 1KHz, 500uS.
digitalWrite(SOUNDOUT_PIN,LOW);
delayMicroseconds(500);
}

This much worked perfectly for the generation of a simple tone, but I wanted to add some user interaction, so I found this article about using a potentiometer on the Arduino website and made some changes to my code.

Here’s the finalized code modified to support an input from a potentiometer:

// Arduino Sound Hello World
// thanks to David Fowler of uCHobby.com for his informative article and
// the majority of this code
// see the original at :
// http://www.uchobby.com/index.php/2007/11/14/arduino-sound-part-2-hello-world/

// Define the I/O pin we will use for our sound output
#define SOUNDOUT_PIN 13

int sensorPin = 0; // the number of the input we're using for the potentiometer
int sensorValue = 0; // initializing the sensorValue, the value itself is arbitrary.
int pulseLength = 500; // this is the default pulseLength giving us a 1KHz tone

void setup(void){
pinMode(SOUNDOUT_PIN,OUTPUT);
}

void loop(void){
//Generate sound by toggling the I/O pin High and Low
//Generate a 1KHz tone. set the pin high for 500uS then
//low for 500uS to make the period 1ms or 1KHz.

//Set the pin high and delay for 1/2 a cycle of 1KHz, 500uS.
digitalWrite(SOUNDOUT_PIN,HIGH);
delayMicroseconds(pulseLength);

//Set the pin low and delay for 1/2 a cycle of 1KHz, 500uS.
digitalWrite(SOUNDOUT_PIN,LOW);
delayMicroseconds(pulseLength);

//Read the value of the potentiometer and reset the pulseLength
sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin);
pulseLength = sensorValue*8; // multiplying input to get a lower tone.
}

That’s it!

This is my first crack at putting together a tutorial, and also my first hack at building with an Arduino, so I’m sure I’ve left stuff out, done stuff wrong, or deserve a general grilling. Please leave a comment and school me!

Follow these links for more info on Wayne.

Swarm, “the heaviest live percussion section you will ever see”:

http://vimeo.com/7582963

EightPrime

http://eightprime.net

To see more of Vincent’s art and hear more of his music visit:
http://www.vincentparker.ca/

During our talk Alex delves deep into the subject of IxD, covering everything from the convergence of products and services to the post-Orwellian commoditization of public space and private experience. If that’s not enough to fill your plate, Alex goes on to suggest how IxD could bring about a future “Garden of Heavenly Delights” where human creativity is harnessed through games.

Like it? Hate it? Want to chime in?
Continue the conversation by leaving a comment below.

Jason has been making music with 8-bit and hand built gear for the last 10 years.
He has produced a number of albums under the moniker “6955″.
Currently he co-owns the video game company Polytron Corporation where he acts as production manager and sound designer.

For more information on Polytron and Fez see: polytroncorporation.com
For more information on 6955 see: 6955.org

Sinking Ship Line-up

Bees on Fire

two deceptively agile nitwitsyoutube

Corner

avant funk ensemble

The Shadow and its Shadow

3 piece improv/noise/free rock ensemble performs improvised scores to surrealist and experimental short films
myspace

prOphecy sun

prOphecy sun is an installation and performance artist who and has a passion in shared community practices, with an emphasis on the body in dialogue with the community at large.
myspace

Julian Gosper

dueling monosynths

The Hermetic Seals

Music improvised to the Fischli and Weiss film “The Way Things Go”.
youtube

Swarm

Hyper-Kinetic Percussion
vimeo

Julianne-Claire, site-specific installation

As a site-specific artist, Julianne-Claire accentuates entry points to unspoken conversations; the intermediary spaces of memory, reference, and all other locations of internal reflection and projection; where a vivid fascination with connection points, cosmology, and the structural and ideological constructions of space and identity form ideas into physical embodiment.

Vancouver Public Library Line-up

Soressa Gardner

Soressa collaborates with novelists and poets, setting their words to electronic soundscapes or songs, as the material demands. For Squarewaves, Soressa will perform two pieces: Kaspoit! by Dennis E. Bolen is a novel of the times, told in the language of the times. It is a pure exploration of the ‘banality of evil’, chilling and outrageous. Homecoming and Heart Monitor by Evie Christie is a collection of poems that “traverse the difficult distance between far-flung places in the province of love” (Paul Vermeerch)
myspace

Not Sent Letters

Graham Meisner and Jeremy Todd will be performing ‘Not Sent Letters’, a spoken word piece with live electronica and video projections.

Jacobson’s Organ

A female trio that experiments with homemade analogue synths.
The audio geography will have the potential range from painfully quiet to pleasurably raucous.

prOphecy sun with Dance Troupe Practice

prOphecy sun is an installation and performance artist who and has a passion in shared community practices, with an emphasis on the body in dialogue with the community at large.
myspace

Dance Troupe Practice (DTP) produces new works that combine dance, sound, media and voice. DTP was formed with a philosophy that explores the border zones between dance and life. The group is committed to the deep exploration of each individual’s dancing body, and the formation of new works through collective process.

Vedic Space Program

Andrew Short performing a set of electronics and samples with a theme on the evolution of the universe. Vedic Space Program uses found sounds and electronics.

Stimulus Package

kristen roos & walter bloodway : live loops no laptops.
myspace

Spectrum Interview

Utilizing a combination of analog and digital synthesizers, electro acoustics, and random galactic interference, Spectrum Interview creates an immersive environment of micro-tonal industrial noise, coloured with exotic plumes of melodic charm.
site

Additional References:

The Way Things Go by Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss.
Heaven and Earth Magic by Harry Smith

LiFT has been working both visually and sonically with D&M Publishers. In terms of graphic design, a new home page and podcast design identity is in the works, but what really has us excited is a chance to use our musical skills in tandem with a great client. Developing the audio brand for D&M presents unique challenges that we are happy to tackle, and hopefully this is a specialty of Lift’s that can be developed and harnessed in the future for more projects similar to this. This new work is yet to go live, but keep an eye on the D&M site in the coming weeks to watch and listen to the transformation as it happens.

Special thanks to Jen Van Evra for all her help with producing the new Speak Easy podcast, and to Travis Nicholson, the “invisible hand” behind the Speak Easy visual brand and cameraman for this week’s LSB as well.

I might even write a review when I’m done.

Over the past few weeks Uniqlo has been asserting a silent presence in the LiFT office in the form of their freely available screen saver. Its mix of strong video clips and minimal branding stylez has been somewhat of an ongoing inspiration. So, when tagging along on on my buddy Ian’s xmas shopping mission the other day I was more than happy to agree to his suggestion that we stop in at the UT shop in Harajuku – one of Tokyo’s busiest shopping centers. I thought there might be a nugget or two of inspiration awaiting me, but I was not at all prepared for what I found.

A digression : I spend a lot of time thinking about technological systems. Whenever I dream about the future of the internet, web 3.0, if you will, I imagine it spilling out from our computer screens into the daily world all around us. For the most part, the internet is currently a place you go to in solitude. Even if you’re in a busy office or cafe, there’s a tunnel between the user and the monitor that occludes all others from sight. I believe this will change, that reality will start modeling itself after the internet, that super markets will guide your consumerism with a “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought …” message ala Amazon.com, that there will be a blurring of the lines between on and off line. And this is pretty much what I saw at the UT shop.

All the shelves are marked, not with printed signage, but with LED displays. All the T-shirts are packaged in plastic jars and lined up on shelves – an abstraction of T-shirts, these are T-shirt Units, ready for your immediate consumption. Ian was looking for a specific kind of shirt, so we walked over to an inset touch-screen in a counter top and we used the interactive system to browse through the shirts in the store and then locate the one he decided on. The system indicated an area on the third floor where we found the shirt hanging on a sample rack and marked with a code which referenced the glowing LED displays on the shelves. Moments later the deal was done.

This wasn’t the first time I’d seen a touch screen information system in a public place : airports, record stores, libraries… many places have such systems available to their users. There were two things that made this one special : one was the excellent design and usability of the interface itself, the other, more importantly, was the 2-way integration between the information space and the physically navigated space. This felt like being in Tron, like being physically inside the database of the online store.