Oh boy. The Solar Bikini was covered today by the national news personality Kurt the Cyberguy on the CW11 in NYC, KTLA in LA, and WGN in Chicago. The solar bikini has gotten press before, but none of this magnitude. A fairly good first showing for the first person who has actually put the thing on. Thanks to Preston Noon for being my doppelgänger and the bikini’s “handler” while I was away in Chicago. All in all a decent summer so far for the bikini. I may have to take Preston’s advice though on the PayPal account for SolarCoterie. I’m flat broke with hundreds of dollars worth of solar bikini on my hands.

I believe the proper quote to end on would be, “you don’t really need an iPod, because we all have music inside our head.”

thank you.

I gave my final Thesis presentation on Tuesday at noon at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. The whole thing came very much down to the wire. I ended up builing the whole presentation in Max/MSP and Isadora. The idea was to have it look exactly like a Keynote or a power point, but with the ability to build interaction and live video processing into the mix. Overall, I think it went well. The archive is here, but I’ve edited off the first few minutes of the screensaver here as a standalone:

More ITP thesis info here. More ITP Spring Show ’07 info here.

I ran into Ilan on the train back to Astoria a couple nights ago and we started talking about various things: About how people in Chicago are too nice. About his inflatable for toddlers. About my thesis. As I was describing the project to him, I nervously realized that in fact, I had gotten it wrong. I would need two camera’s per mask. I couldn’t just use two wireless cams unless I wanted to split the signal pre-wireless and preemptively route it to it’s own mask. I don’t want to degrade the signal on the wireless cams any more than I have to. So. Two cams it is. Here’s a test with two. For some reason the IR LEDs are still giving me some trouble. Apparently IR light is hard to diffuse. Try it sometime. Let me know.

My head fits in a bike helmet made for an 8 year old. This is troublesome to me. Though, I guess the label does say “8+.” I’m “+.” Sure. I made an impulse buy of the bike helmet today because I needed to buy another LCD screen for my thesis, but before I could do that, I would have to test the LCD’s I already have, which was the original idea for ordering them. I started to test for differences in quality. Then I realized I would need to test the screen under basically the same circumstances as the original one is currently employed. Which means attaching it to a bike helmet and pointing at my face. So. Before I knew it, I ended up with this. Oh boy. 8+. More about networking the two helmets later.

And on it goes. I’ve finally integrated, albeit with gaffer’s tape, all of the components of the FaceMask on to the bike helmet. A screen covering the mouth, a small wired camera,a video Ipod, two wireless custom perf boards, and a lithium-polymer battery to power the whole thing are now held in place with gaff-tape and rubber bands.

As briefly explained in the video, the idea is to have two of these devices with one of the perf boards on the opposite helmet, and vise-versa. This way you can “slap” your mouth on to some one else’s face and they can do the same to you. The interaction is not limited to slamming your head against a hard object. It’s just what is in my thoughts at present.

This new perf board is fairly simple. I’ve built a standard 5 volt circuit for the atmega8 chip then regulated the voltage further to 3.3v for the Xbee. There’s a debugging LED on pin 13 of the atmel. The only other big thing on the board is a 3VDC DPDT relay. DPDT means double pole double throw. Basically I’m using the 6 pins as a manual video A/B switcher. The three blue terminal blocks other than the terminal block for the power, are wired to the relay. I’ve wired up two sets of two pins with signal and ground from two video sources – one from the video Ipod and one from the camera behind the screen which is pointing at the mouth. The other set of two pins is the signal and ground to the screen. I take the coil pin high to switch between contact with the two video signals.

I had a bunch of trouble after I got everything on the perf borad with the chip freaking out when the coil demagnetized, or magnetized to rapidly on and off. I thought perhaps there was some back voltage that was causing the problem so I threw a 3.3v Zener diode before and after the coil. No dice. Next I noticed my lack of any decoupling capacitors. I threw a 10uF cap before the 5v regulator, a 1uF cap after, and some on before and after the 3.3v regulator for good measure. This seems to have done the trick. I think the voltage was dropping when the relay was being fired.

The perf boards were a bitch to put together. In the course of prototyping the breadboards I also inadvertently fried three, count them three, Xbee’s simultaneously by putting an unregulated 9 volts through their cute little blue bodies. All dogs go to heaven. I’ve heard the same is true for honey bees. We can only hope this extends to Xbee’s. I’ll order $60 worth of new bee tomorrow.

The face mask has been going through different iterations lately. I’ve repositioned the camera on the back, added new IR LEDs and diffusers and am now using a lithium-polymer battery instead of a DC converter for all the power. This contrast of the image is helped by the IR LEDs, which makes the viewing angle a bit better as well. I’ve also got my Xbee circuit set up on a perf board as explained in the video and as seen in the pictures below.

Last but certainly not least is the Max patch that I’ve been working on (screen shot / .sit). Compare this new patch with what I was doing in the old version. Many thanks to Luke DuBois for the help with efficiency of parsing in Max and to Rob Faludi for help with general Xbee packet information and for letting me borow his dongle.

Next up is getting more screen for the eyes, then duplicating everything and patching them together wirelessly. Three weeks to go!

I bought a couple of small screens to test from EarthLCD. (The guy I spoke with on the phone was an asshole. Just saying.) The screens are about 5″ each. One is black & white and one is color. The plan is to test these out, and buy more of the one I like better The following are short tests with the screens. Eventually…these will go on my face.

What’s happening: The two camera’s respective signals are being sent across a DPDT (Double Pole Double Throw) relay. One signal and one ground to separate poles on one side. When the relay is thrown either way, one of the two camera’s signals is connected and the image shows on the screen. The relay is being triggered by a lower voltage (5VDC) relay which itself is being thrown by pulling a pin high on an Atmega8. The Atmega8 is reading analog data (pulseIn (Arduino)) being transferred from an Xbee wireless module whose pair Xbee is doing an analog read of a Piezo sensor.

Basically. When the Piezo is shaken enough, the camera is switched. A debounce function is thrown in for good measure.

With the BlinkCam fixed and up and running, I’ve decided to take it out onto the streets. Many more pictures soon to come. In the mean time – I’ve documented some public interaction:

click to play

more here

Last week I detailed the construction of what I am now calling the BlinkCam. Unfortunately, I shorted the circuitry of the camera itself. It powers up, but the switches no longer trigger the shutter as intended.

The only solution was to purchase a fresh polaroid for hacking. Same steps as before, and In about a half hour I’ve got myself a working BlinkCam! Check the demo here.

And check these hot pics!

Can’t wait to take it to the streets!

UPDATE LINK!!! – takin’ it to the streets!

This weekend I performed in the build/decay festival at The Tank. It was my first opportunity to incorporate Experimental Devices for Performance into a live stage performance. I used the video hat I’ve been working on and demoed for the second week of Wearables class. There are some improvements made to the last version. The current build includes 3 enlarged patches of conductive fabric for the leads as well as two sets of eyelash switches (see this entry for more on eyelash switches). Many thanks to Lauren Rosati for putting the festival together and Mike Rosenthal and The Tank for being generally awesome.

And the biggest thanks to Ariel Efron for documenting the show. Thank you!

Video is below.

view the program

video