projects

Airplane Shadows _ Mockup 1

A quick mockup of a project idea. I love the flight patterns project from years past, and have always wanted to build something similar. Seeing a number of airplane shadows pass over my office gave me this idea. I hope to build an airplane shadow map using flight position, altitude, heading, and aircraft type coupled with calculations for sun angles.

The scale and speed should be pretty accurate, 100 foot long plane traveling at 570 mph (about 830 feet per sec). That’s pretty fast, viewing at this scale.

Putting the results into Google Maps would be step 1, though I’d love that in Google Earth you’d see the shadows rolling over hills.

Bonsai V4.0 _ Matrix Revisited

I dug out my LED Matrices and was pleasantly surprised that I’d designed these custom carrier boards and had some sample code on my laptop that actually worked.

This is in support of Dao’s latest project, and she’s currently working on the other half (a dress sewn from scratch, and a custom matrix of LEDs connected with conductive fabric tape and thread).

We’re both glad the arduino controller bit is taken care of.

FYI, these carrier boards would be even better if I hadn’t messed up some pins so the matrix rows go 8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Ah, it can always be fixed in the code, and was!

Project Ideas

Fish Machine 3 – Theremin Sound
Order theremin kit
Assemble, test, and tune
Test with fish tank, re-tune and test for interference
Develop tone visualizer in Processing, PD, or other

Drawing Machines
fix older 2 arm drawing machine
+ develop new drawing program & Arduino controller

build new Record Player drawing machine
Modify rotation for servo or stepper power
Add optical reader for tracking rotation (if needed)
Modify tune arm for servo control (geared down?)
Add pen-up control
+ develop new drawing program & Arduino controller

LED Bonsai 4 – California Endangered Species
Develop Processing sketch to visualize hairball designs to new 3D

Lamp Shades 3D Models – Rapid Prototyped
Develop Processing 3D recursive models

Plywood Furniture
Shelves, Bench, Table

Recipe Screen
LCD displaying current recipe in Kitchen
Add browsing and later editing

Rapid Prototyping Machines
Additive Machine
Milling Machine

Electric Car Conversion

RFID Pet Trackers

Arduino – Relay Shield?

Happy Holidays

I’m back to doing some work in Processing, actually building on some of the older work drawing trees. This is for my holiday e-card, some nice fractal snowflakes. Saw a program on PBS about the history of fractals that got me all excited about them again. This program uses L-Systems to draw the recursive bits, and as kind of a hack draws 3 Koch Curves to make each Snowflake.

(click the image to see the sketch)

RGB Firefly Sync

RGB Firefly Sync, originally uploaded by mdshaub.
My circuit board-to-be. I’m working on a new project based on the great work here:
tinkerlog.com/2008/07/27/synchronizing-fireflies-ng/

In my 1st version I will house the circuit within a ping pong ball. Ordered the boards through SparkFun for $2.50 ea. today!
Oh, and used Eagle3D to generate these renders in POVRay.

My Personal Planet #1 – test 2

My second attempt at making a planet from the same source video from PointGrey. This one has a little stubbier buildings, more foreground, and a better blurring of the center of the image. That turned out pretty well considering I had to cover up the car that shot the video sequence.

If I shot my own footage, I guess I’d have more sky above.

My Personal Planet #1

Well, sort of a departure, but not really spending enough time on electronics recently to make much progress. This is a fun little distraction, not so unlike the Peter Pan series of photos.

Inspired by the small planets found here on Flickr and elsewhere. They reminded me of the Little Prince and I certainly wanted one of my own. I happened upon a sample panoramic video from PointGrey Research (ptgrey.com) and had to try this out.

I’ll likely try a version where the buildings aren’t so exaggerated next. Maybe shoot some of my own photos/video too.

Processing Research

Some attempts to make grass blowing in the wind yielded interesting results and a little confusion/bewilderment/frustration. Pretty normal.

I found some examples that may help:
3D Grass

Swirling Noise

Trees not Grass

Fluid Dynamics

Pollen Sand Storm

WindChimes Project

Last weekend on a long drive I willed a new idea into existence. I’ll try to make a high-tech version of some wind chimes. The project should be more ambient than very literal, both visual and auditory. I’d like to say that the final piece should help connect someone to the outdoors even when they must be inside. It might be more thought provoking to do that through a medium that seems so opposite, so disconnected from nature, and that I like very much.

We’ll see how it goes, what form it takes, and if it’s one thing or many, separate or interconnected.

Fireflies and Code