conferences /papers

http://mason.gmu.edu/~jgero/conferences/dcc08/

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* Special Issue on Tangible Interaction for Design - for AIEDAM is accepting paper until April 18, 2008

http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~aiedam/SpecialIssues/Do-Gross.html

AIEDAM Special Issue, Spring 2009, Vol. 23, No. 2

Tangible Interaction for Design

Edited by: Ellen Yi-Luen Do & Mark D Gross

This special issue of AIEDAM will be devoted to papers concerned with Tangible Interaction for Design.

Following decades in which design computation was almost exclusively the domain of software, today many investigators are building hybrid systems and tools that, in one way or another, bridge the divide between physical "real world" artifacts and computat ional artifacts. On one hand the rapid rise and popularity of mass-customization, rapid prototyping and manufacturing raises questions about the kinds of software systems and tools that might make these hardware technologies useful in designing. On the ot her hand, advances in microcontroller and communications technologies has led to a wave of embedding computation in physical artifacts and environments - that is, tangible interaction.

The "Tangible Interaction for Design" special issue calls for papers that populate this space of hybrid computational-physical systems, particularly in relation to design. Topics might include (but are not limited to) the following:

• systems, methods, and tools for rapid prototyping and manufacturing in design;
• AI techniques for tangible user interaction in engineering design applications and other design domains;
• computational reasoning about physical and tangible artifacts and productions;
• physical artifacts as external representations and how they coupled to internal representations;
• human centered computing issues for tangible user interactions;
• 
  
• theories and procedures to analyze or generate tangible interaction for design;
• tools and techniques for tangible design artifacts to support design;
• tangible interaction with design software;
• design methods for tangible interactivity;
• toolkits for tangible interaction design;

The Prototyping Toolbox

Ive been looking for this for a while - since the Interactionsdesign Forum

from TODO

http://www.todo.to.it/


A history of the development of Processing - Wiring - Arduino at IDII

"All designers have their medium: for a product designer it may be plastics, for an architect brick or concrete, for a graphic designer litho printing. The medium of the interaction designer is computation: software and electronics.
Until recently, this medium was only accessible to engineers: designers weren't able to work directly with programming and electronics to develop and test their ideas.
This map shows the work of professors and students over the past four years at Interaction-Ivrea, together with many collaborators all over the world. The software and hardware they have built, used in many of the Institute's projects, allows designers to be truly creative in this new medium."
Gillian Crampton Smith

download yours:
http://www.todo.to.it/media/idii_toolbox.pdf

BUGGED OUT IN THE SUN ON GADGETS

At Etech this Week: .

Personalizing the Device: How Communities Will Help Actualize User-generated Hardware and the Long-tail of Gadgetsa presentation from Peter Semmelhack - Bug Labs 

http://www.buglabs.net

Peter Semmelhack (Bug Labs)

The explosive growth of user-generated content has proved that creativity can trump capital, in that the barriers to create and distribute content have been virtually eliminated. Social web services (e.g., Flickr, YouTube), and "mashups" of these services, have created a unique collaborative infrastructure that enable new possibilities in producing and sharing information, media, and perhaps most importantly, ideas.

This new system of exchange has now materialized in the physical world, as we're empowered to create personalized, or "user-generated," apparel, automobiles, and hardware—specifically, consumer electronics. With the support of the community, individuals are helping each other develop new ways of experiencing this universe of content in a far more personalized context.

About the Bug Labs modules: my inital thoughts and questions

- The base station seems a little expensive as a get in. But its GPL - can they asume a DIY BUG board will emerge

- in that spirit - how easy is it to get into 

- How about the modules- get them apart - grow your own - an eco-system of module hackers and wranglers would be a key thing.

- how bout compatibility with other platforms? - set up your own platforms and standards - but can you talk to the others - maybe hackers will help find a way around this; prediction: 1st internet hack; Bug Base to Wiimote :P

- eg. software hackers from Rails to Flash, to Processing to  Max/MSP-Pd could get in on the act if it talks to their code

Project Sun SPOT: Inspiring Future Gadgets

Roger Meike 

A new generation of gadgets is emerging that can wirelessly communicate, sense their environment and affect the physical world around them. Learn to use open source software and hardware to create everything from gesture-based interfaces to robot swarms to a rainforest monitoring system that may just save the world.

For the Sun SPOTS:

Cuboid

from Wolfram Mathworld: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Cuboid.html

A closed box composed of three pairs of rectangular faces placed opposite each other and joined at right angles to each other, also known as a rectangular parallelepiped. The cuboid is also a right prism, a special case of the parallelepiped, and corresponds to what in everyday parlance is known as a (rectangular) "box." Cuboids are implemented in Mathematica as Cuboid[xmin, ymin, zmin, xmax, ymax, zmax] by giving the coordinates of opposite corners. The monolith with side lengths 1, 4, and 9 in the book and film version 2001: A Space Odyssey is an example of a cuboid.

Fritzing

Fritzing is a new project from the emerging Interaction Design Lab at FH Potsdam lead by Prof. Reto Wettach and André Knörig


It is an open source initiative inspired by the Processing and Arduino projects to provide a similar easier learning and work flow for art and design students and practitioners to use EDA (Electronic Design Automation)

"We are aiming to create a software in the spirit of Processing and Arduino, that allows the designer/artist/researcher/hobbyist to document their Arduino-based prototype and create a PCB layout for manufacturing. The complimenting website helps to share and discuss drafts and experiences as well as to reduce manufacturing costs."

Having known Prof Reto and visited FH Potsdam I think its really a great place to start this.
It will be a really challenging project. Now that the Arduino and Wiring projects are really popular and in use through out art and design institutions around the world, it is interesting to consider the next part of the prototyping process, how to make bespoke PCBs and to produce more rapidly from the 'breadboard' stage to a more solid working piece.

From my own experience just looking at how PCBs are designed and produced it is currently complex and for a beginner daunting. It is great that there are open sourced examples from Arduino related projects, and MAKE(rs) availible, but dealing with the file formats .brd .sch software like EAGLE, etc. is far away from the stripped down simplicity and immediacy of Arduino or Processing.
As far as I got - I've been experimenting with cutting machines, and thinking more conceptually than practically looking at cutting ciruits on 2d CAD machines into different materials. The difficulty in transfering from the EAGLE format to a format that these machines or other CAD machines can use (.dxf, seemed to be prohibitive if not impossible.
I would hope that making these formats more open and compatible could be something that Fritzing could contribute to.

Report from Mediamatic RFID and Physical Computing Hackers Camp

I recently participated in the Mediamatic RFID and Physical Computing Hackers Camp.

Here are some findings about the technical set-up and the project made:

<..>

RFID Reader:

A USB based board with integrated Antenna.

http://www.sonmicro.com/1356/sm132.php

It is for HF (High Frequency) cards, such as Mifare, also similar to used by Oyster Card (London Transport) and NFC tags developed by Nokia etc for phone based tagging and payment.

How to get the data: you need to install the driver of course (uses FTDI USB Serial chip - same as Arduino) then you need to send the module messages in hex to get it to

For PICINC this was done by a script from Marco W. It sets the board to read continuously the ID type and serial number of any

In Mac OS X, make sure you have Perl + Serial Port module installed (that took lot longer than I thought!!) and run from command line - something like this.

[pic of terminal]

The PICNIC Network:

Part of the rationale for the workshop and the projects generated was to make use of the PICNIC Network as set up for the visitors to the PICNIC'07 conference. The content management system is a version of anyMeta developed by Mediamatic. Mediamatic.net also runs on this system. It creates a profile for each user and then allows them to add keywords or 'tags' to their profile.

http://www.picnicnetwork.org/

[pic my profile page]

During the PICNIC'07 conference visitors and staff were also given a Mifare RFID key fob, that could be connected to their PICNIC Network profile when registered.

In fact the system as such would allow any RFID tag or card to be registered. The technical spec would be that it was HF RFID type tag such as Mifare. (Apparently in Holland citizens usually carry up to 3 tagged ID cards or transport tickets already. London citizens could have tried their Oyster card. Gizmondo citizens could have tried their Nokia 6131 NFC phone, unfortunately even l though I had the last two, I had to leave early so couldn't try them. )

[pic of tag]

The project I worked on:

Before the workshop I had submitted some ideas that I would like to discuss and maybe develop.

These were titled 'Badge Collector' and 'Touch and plus'

The badge idea seemed to have more resonance for some of the participants,

However the original idea of actually making active RFID badges was put aside, as too technically difficult for this stage.

There was some debate about whether you can just mount a RFID tag sticker on a button badge, but unsure whether it interferes with antenna and transmission of signal.

So I had an idea to virtualise the badge collecting and visualise it using a magic mirror display. This was worked on for some time day one, a demo visualiser was made.

In discussion it was noted that the mirror display is quite 1 person, so it misses the idea that people make social networks and sociabilty through looking and sharing the badges, and its missed in the mirror display which is quite a private experience.

Group were selected - I was lucky to be joined by Mark Wubben and Audrey, then we truly were worked on the project together.

The project was then brainstormed further and became more about a profiling and grouping application that would corresponds to stickers or badges printed on demand.

12 groups were made based on a manual and then algorithmic analysis of the keywords users had added to their profile. There were about 100 keywords set up on the system that related to work and hobbies, professions etc.

The 12 groups were first called 'signs' as in star signs - and hence the 12. Then it became apparent to call them after animals.

In the time some icons were made from a font set that is quite cutesy, but appealed to a certain playfulness. The animals were hedgehog, koala, mouse, bird, bull, monkey, owl, deer, bear, dolphin, fox, penguin.

Thus the name of the project became 'badger' another mysterious animal.

The sticker machine was made from an inject printer linked to a mac and the Mifare reader. Scripted to read the tag ID, find the profile from database, parse the profile keywords and then assign an animal sign. Then controlled by an Applescript, which printed out a set of stickers from a file. (Great work there by Mark Wubben!)

It would have been hoped to have a automated button press, that just spit out badges pre-pressed (but those are £5000+)

Further developments - as suggested/commented

• customised badges, the image made on the badge is somehow scraped from images in the Picnic network then assigned to the user profile, ie carnivore or driftnet.
  
• the original 'tag' badge,
  
• the future fully electronic badge, something like the nfc phone - tag and reader in one, protoype in thought - 1st version maybe 5" diameter!
  

Open Source Electronics wiki

http://www.opencircuits.com/Main_Page