new skins

Sound inputs

What is the purpose of Sound inputs in my emotive lamp project?

Sound plays an important part in our everyday lives.
Without sound, it is like painting a picture without color.

Sound affects our reaction in every way,
for example, the sound of a car horn warning of any danger approaching.
When the loud sound waves travels through our ears, our heart pumps extremely fast and the blood flow increases, thus, we react. This is thus, portrayed in the lamp that i'm doing.

I've decided to create an interactive sound file which reacts according to the keys pressed on my keyboard. The different keys will be programmed to create different lighting outputs and vibrating effects on the lamp.

Some visuals to explain what the outcome will be like:

Blinking LED + Sound Input= Emotive Lamp

Here's an example:
http://www.tree-axis.com/Ess/_examples/spookyStreamSave/

PROBLEMS!

I AM HAVING PROBLEMS WITH THE ARDUINO PROGRAM!
sob..
Is there anyone who can help me?
The tutorials on the arduino website itself isn't clear enough.


As seen from the above is a screen shot from the webpage itself,
However, My program doesn't seem to recognize any USB input even though the wire is properly connected and the arduino board lights up.
Changed several wires but it still ain't working.

the final sketched lamp and its outcome.

Finally decided on the lamp outlook
put to practice what i learnt in 3d foundation studies
joining the sides with superglue
the lamp done but unlit
final lamp
final lamp 2

inspirations and initial sketches

blur image of other lamp mockup sketches
octostyle inspired drawing

My initial sketches in the ideas of lamps and changing some of my inspiration into the lamp:loops
inspiration from dna,springs,tentacles
blood vein into spiral lamp
artery structure into layers for the lamp

tree vines for the spira like feet

Day 10 - Up to Date

The WEBSITE THAT DID ME GREAT SERVICE.


LEDs i bought *red and blue
Testing the difference between series and parallel
look of the Leds after being soldered together
testing out the lights(few got burnt in the process)
soldered the leds altogether via paralled and series circuit

IT IS WORKING!

Day 9- readings

Priority List:

1) More research on LED circuits and electronics [x]
2)Sketches on the Lamp finish[x]
3)Build Up the Lamp [x/x]
4)Research on sound files and music keynotes [ ]
5)Making a program that works on keyPressed to emit sounds [ ]
6)Researching on Arduino circuit board tutorials [ ]
7)Connecting the circuit to the Lamp and Computer [ ]
8)Touch Up & Present [ ]






Readings:
the seven lamps of architecture. by john ruskin

Day 8- Getting Started

Products
1 x	Arduino Diecimila

What is it for?
used to develop stand-alone interactive objects or can be communicate with software running on your computer (e.g. Flash, Processing, MaxMSP.)

Managed to order an arduino from online today, will be getting it soon.
Tried to work on the processing language, but it still doesn't seem to be able to work.
Do not understand why the keyPressed function can't seem to work out, programming really isn't easy.

Tested out some LEDs and resistors today, managed to light it up accordingly, will upload the photos in the next post.

Day 7- Target Audience

purpose: to make it simple to understand and workable with all ages.

Instructions: Test out my emotive lamp, play some music, it produces moods according to the LEDs that lights up.

Target Audience:
- To attract the older/younger generation to it and for it to work as a product in its objective(as stated in my proposal). Making it work as an easy interactive display of an emotional machine.

Day 6 - Some rough sketches

Some rough sketches on ideas:

Initial idea: diff colors emited, to hack the device and re-program it.
Recreate a body for it to work better as a lamp.


Voice input in the microphone, LEDs light up according to the pitch/amplitude of voice.


-Diff layers involved: each layer representing its own color of emotion.
LEDs connected to a circuit via a breadboard.
Voice input in the microphone, LEDs light up according to the pitch/amplitude of voice.

Day 5 - references & research

Book references: (product design for lamps)

-Brilliant Lights & Lighting by Jane Paritt

-1000 Lights by Taschen

Materials:
- Fabrics ( White Cotton, Natural Linen, Hessian)

-Paper ( Fibre, shuja)

-Metal ( Silver polished, Silver brushed)

-Glass ( Transparent Quartz Glass for Lamps)

-Parchments ( Cells, Ice White, Granite)

LEDs
-Multicolor LEDs:

Bicolor LEDs contain 2 dice of different colors connected back to back, and can produce any of 3 colors. Current flow in one direction produces one color, current in the other direction produces the other color, and bidirectional current produces both colors mixed together.

Tricolor LEDs contain 2 dice of different colors with a 3 wire connection, available in common anode or common cathode configurations. The most common form of both the bicolor and tricolor LEDs is red/green, producing orange when both colors are powered.

RGB LEDs contain red, green and blue emitters, generally using a 4 wire connection with one common (anode or cathode)

What I might be looking for is:

LED lamps (also called LED bars or Illuminators) are usually clusters of LEDs in a suitable housing.
Another Example is the typically known Christmas decoration lights.

Day 4 - Problems

Initial skeches of the lamp, by using the laptop as the screen emitter.

However, I realised there are some disadvantages:

1. The lighting of the screen is not strong enough

2. If the screen is covered even by a semi-translucent material, it won't produce nice results.

3. I would have to cover the entire laptop including the keypad, thus the further it is away from the screen the harder to see the light intensity

4.If i do not cover the whole laptop, the lamp would not work as a lamp instead it would just be a program.

5. Covering the whole object woud make it look bulky and inconvinient.

Thus, I did more research and decided to create a lamp myself.

What I would look into is "disco lightings" , Led usage, and "lamp" product designs.

More sketches would be uploaded in next few posts.

Day 3- Workcheck

WorkCheck Week09

-Title (Done )

-Intended Outcome(one sentence) (done )

-Target Audience(half done )

-Progress:

[proposal, (done )
research, (half done)
references, (half done )
sketches, journal ( )
Readings, ( )
Experiments(blog)] (process )

Day 2- R&D

Research & Development:

Areas on which i will be touching on,

Product Design
-lamps
-covers(lids,covers,rough sketches)

Sculptures
-shapes(coincide shape with laptop screen)
-sizes (portable?) : things to note [restrictions, length, space]

Emotions
-human beings
-definitions(dict/creative view)
-nonliving things
-virtual pets with emotions(neopets, face book..)

Sound Detectors
-computer mic
-microphones

Micro-controllers

Processing
-sound testing: pitch & amplitude
(vol, rhythm, whistle, high or low voice)

Target Audience
-Age, gender, purpose and outcome

Lighting
-colors
-intensity
-light with sound(disco lights, deejaying, sensors)

Programme
-To try out a simple program that reacts to sound
i.e: color change according to the pitch / amplitude

Day 1- Project Proposal

Lasalle College Of The Arts (Faculty of Media Arts)

Project Proposal

Name: Tan Mui Lyn Nadia

Stud ID: 8989

Class: IA4A

Emotive Lamps

Lighting affects a person more than any other design detail in your home. The choice of lighting fixtures, light bulbs, and color of light makes a difference to one's emotional and physical comfort. Lighting is both an art and a science. Thus, I decided to create an emotional machine that produces emotions when in contact.

In this project, a lamp will be created. To switch it on, the user has to input his/her voice through a microphone. The machine will recognize and analyze the tone of the voice depending on the pitch/amplitude that is input into the system. The machine’s emotion will be its “unhappiness” by reacting to the tone of the voice input. For an example, a high amplitude sound may mean you are shouting at it, thus, it lights up a hot LED color in its process like the color Red.

It acts as a robot, but is programmed in a way that shows an unhappy emotion when being rude to.

Objective

The objective of my project is to allow people to recognise the emotions that can be triggered in machines in various ways. It is also to show how these emotions can be potrayed in lights as well as sound.