LED Fan Sign

By Justin on October 8th, 2008, 10:09 pm

 Although I’d imagine that we could find a better message, the technology is dead simple and very cool results. MAKE also has an upcoming Halloween Special Edition issue… probably too late for us to accomplish a lot this year, but good thing to keep in mind for next year!

[via]

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Botanicalls at Conflux 2008

By Justin on September 17th, 2008, 11:03 am

Botanicalls is this incredible project I came across sometime last year. Essentially, it uses a microcontroller and sensor along with PHP and an open-source telephone system to allows plants to make phone calls and ask for water when they’re getting dried out. The project, as part ofConflux 2008, has become a walking tour in New York during which, “Participants call the Botanicalls main phoneline and navigate to the location-specific plant. Each tree or plant, speaks in their own ‘Botanicalls’ voice - which is based on their botanical habits and characteristics.” Not only do I think the project is a really great use of simple hardware and technology to create a novel experience, but the way in which they document and visually describe their project is really, really good.

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TV-B-Gone in a Hoodie

By Justin on September 16th, 2008, 11:11 am

Rebecca Stern from FAT Labs and Sternlab made a hoodie function as a TV-B-Gone. I think we had tossed around the idea of doing this, though her execution is really slick—you just have to zip or unzip the zipper to turn the targeted TV off.

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Jessica Banks and Ayah Bdeir: Open Source Snobs

By Justin on August 25th, 2008, 10:00 pm

Short video from a talk by Jessica Banks & Ayah Bdeir from the MIND08 Symposium (part of the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit at MOMA and co-presented by SEED Magazine). Both Banks and Bdeir are former MIT students and research fellows at Eyebeam’s R&D Open Lab. They talk about the concept of opensource  design, and what it could mean for both designers and end-users. Over the 16 minutes, they briefly go over some history of opensource software, their ideas and products (which are pretty incredible), and the potential for the future to be patent-free.

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3D Image Projection

By Carolina on July 21st, 2008, 10:00 pm

In 2006, AIST (Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology) developed the first 3D image projector. “How does it work?” you say? From Pink Tentacle:

The newly developed device … creates “real” 3D images by using laser light, which is focused through a lens at points in space above the device, to create plasma emissions from the nitrogen and oxygen in the air at the point of focus. Because plasma emissions continue for a short time, the device is able to create 3D images by moving the point of focus.

Essentially, the laser IGNITES AIR to create a pixel. So, I wouldn’t suggest touching it. lawlz.

Here’s one more article about the update of the projector.

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Energy

By Justin on July 21st, 2008, 9:19 am

“Could it be that we are connected to all things in the universe and not the centre of it?”

Last night I saw two episodes of E² Design on TVO. The shows are incredibly well-done, the cinematography style alone would have been enough to have me watch an hour worth of television on nearly any topic, but the fact that the show focuses on our current/historical energy crisis/solutions made it that much better. The website for the show offers downloads of each episode in podcast form, which is highly recommended. The introduction to the show, which you should immediately hear/see playing when you go to their website is inspiring and describes a mindset that I hope becomes more widespread—that we are continually making decisions that effect more people and more things than we could ever have imagined. 

A quick entry from the always good Pasta & Vinegar highlights an instance of “revealing the invisible” in France where this large sign shows the real-time energy production of roof-top solar panels and the saved greenhouse gases. We need to be able to see, to understand, what it is we are doing by following the same consumption patterns we have for the last 25 years.

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Turning TVs off With a Single-Purpose Universal Remote

By Justin on July 9th, 2008, 4:44 pm

This is the TV-B-Gone—it is a single-purpose universal remote that is used to shut off a large variety of televisions. You can see a video of it in action. It’s open-source, so it’s fairly easy to build using the instructions included on Ladyada’s website. 

I was thinking about combining that with the Turn-Signal Biking Jacket project we looked at last week. We could basically build this remote into the front pocket of a jacket and run a switch to the tip of the sleeve and the go around the mall and turn off all the TVs. 

And on a different, but related note, check out this blog, Creative Physical Computing, many, many in-progress projects using things like Arduino, Max/MSP/Jitter, Processing, Quartz Composer, etc.

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