Buttons, wires, sewing.. interactions getting there...

The final buttons for our interactions are now made...got 3 more  buttons from the second hacked keyboard we  are using these instead of the arduino now, so two buttons will be used for the little crocheted flowers that start the animations and one for the big flower.

I have made 2 soft buttons, with tinfoil and sponge i encased them in the lovely crocheted flowers Annie's mum and aunties made and have sewn them up. They seem tight and secure and the feel nice and squishy so when people find them in the bed of flowers they'll be disguised and won't have an obvious button!
^Siobhan

Photo Diary | Exhibition Room Day 2

We had a very full day between set design, and today's deadline for our group evaluation and individual self-evaluation reports.

The Flower Bed Interaction

Alannagh multitasking; set design & group evaluation

Siobhán typing the group evaluation 

40" LCD TV on loan from Harvey Norman

the room is taking shape 

To view our progress today in photos: Click Here

Annie.

Set Design | Mobile Frame

The Mobile Frame

click image to enlarge

Three interactions will hang from the mobile. Three different shapes; a fish, a flower and a butterfly. Siobhán and Fodhla are making the technology, and Annie's mum is decorating the plastic canvas frame. They are going to be amazing!

Alannagh made a great job of the mobile. See the mock-up design here.

Annie.

Set Design | Microphone Interaction

Alannagh worked hard today on set design. In fact, Alannagh made so much progress it will have to be blogged over several posts! She's amazing at this kind of thing, take a look...

A microphone stand covered with green fleece material and
decorated with fairy lights.
Alannagh handmade the flowers from paper & attached them to the lights.

add electricity

add one microphone courtesy of Annie's brother 

embed the microphone in paper

and hey presto, a fully functional flower-style microphone interaction

Click here to see a prototype design, and click here to see what the microphone controls on screen.

Annie

The final Countdown...

It was a hectic day for us today, as tomorrow is pretty much the Deadline to have our room set up.
Annie is working tirelessly on programming trying to get our animations playing, and perfected.
Alannagh has been working on our set design and has decided to scrap the rock button and instead use a Giant flower with a push button instead as you walk in to start the interactions.
Myself and Fodhla went in to sort out our equipment with the technicians we had to ensure to get a G5 mac, and the technicians will install Flash on it for us.
Next we had to go and collect the TV. Myself and Fodhla Organised for Harvey Norman  Dundalk, to sponser us a huge 40inch LCD TV, Which looks Great in our room

Next we gathered up all the set design materials from allanaghs and transported them to the carrolls Building. 

As myself and fodhla are working on the rest of the Interactions for the project now, we tested would the pendulum interaction in fact work. It seems to work on a temporary basis, and i am confident it will work when we get the sturdier crocheted pieces back. 

We also tested the windmill interaction, but after trying tirelessy to get it to work it is just too flimsy. 

We tried to get a motion sensor working but to no avail. 

We researched interactions on instructables and allanagh came up with the idea to put soft buttons in the already crocheted flowers we have made by Annies mum and aunts. This is  great idea and we will do this tomorrow. 

Now to get on with our paperwork as the deadline is looming!! 

^Siobhan

Photo Diary | Exhibition Room Day 1

As luck would have it we were allocated a sound proof room to exhibit REplay :) This is perfect, and necessary, for our microphone interaction to work effectively.

our room is on the corridor between the two exhibition areas

Alannagh's mate Niall setup the 40" TV we have on loan from Harvey Norman

Niall told us we need one of these to make
our Mac G5 compatible with the TV

* Thanks Niall, for your help and advice * 

The TV will sit in front of the polystyrene wall feature.

it absorbs sound waves and stops them from
bouncing around the walls, and more importantly it looks fab

While we prepare our room for set design and equipment, other groups have the tiring task of assembling, painting and decorating their exhibit kits. I don't envy them!

Alannagh in the exhibition hall with a group of 4th year students from the
BA (Hons) in Video and Film Production 

These four guys spent all day on their space making it into a room. They did a fantastic job. They ran slats of wood across the top and draped weed control fabric over the top, and over the entrance, to make the room dark. Very impressive.

This is exactly what we had planned until we were allocated a room. I can safely say it would have taken us four girls more than one day to achieve the same result.

a closer look at their entrance 

To view our progress today in photos: click here.

Annie.

Windmill & Mobile Interaction Progress

Myself and Siobhán working on the windmill interaction.

Windmill Interaction from REplay on Vimeo.

Siobhán & Fodhla brainstorming and testing interaction designs

Fodhla, Niall, Alannagh & Siobhán, (Annie's behind the camera)

Design and technology for the butterfly interaction on the mobile.

Pendulum Design from REplay on Vimeo.

Fodhla & Siobhán

Something From Nothing

Alannagh came up with a new interaction. Below she is holding a hallow plastic tube with the wire frame of an old lamp at the top. She fed a wire up the tube and attached a push button to the top. The button will be embedded in the bud of a huge flower.

It may not look like much now, but wait and see, it will be awesome by Monday!

pink and gold, soon to be, flower petals

Annie

Still Unfinished but Getting Closer

Alannagh.

Detecting a Microphone with ActionScript 3.0

For our deadline yesterday I used nested if statements to play and stop animations, and to manipulate their properties (the animations on screen are converted to movie clip symbols). For the final hand up code the movie clips will be removed from the stage rather than hidden from view to try to reduce the odds of animations crashing Adobe Flash during use.

It took several attempts to get this code working, and I am happy with the result.

screen grab from Annie's home computer

Interaction Walk Through
Alternatively you can just watch the video below.   

NOTE: Adobe Flash records the microphone input on a volume of 1 to 100 (100 being maximum volume). To allow for natural ambiance in our exhibition room the interaction is programmed to ignore sounds below 15.

(we may review the figures below pending a microphone test run in the exhibition room)

1. user speaks at a volume above 15: blue bird animation plays

2. user speaks between 25 and 60: butterfly animation plays

3. user speaks between 65 and 100: water and fish animations play

4. blue bird and butterfly no longer play. user speaks above 20: the fish plays (there is a limit of 5 plays to encourage the user to move along to the next interaction. Getting a bit technical... this is also a fail safe in case the user gets bored; we need the water and fish animations to stop in order to keep the total number of running animations on screen at any one time under 6.)

5. when user speaks above 20 for the 6^th time: butterfly and fish are removed from screen, water becomes still.

See this in action for yourself...

Coding the Microphone Interaction from REplay on Vimeo.

screen grabs of the output trace text 

click to enlarge

Adobe Flash CS4 ActionScript 3.0 Code
I'm afraid I'm too busy at the moment to colour code and indent the script, sorry.

import flash.events.ActivityEvent;
import flash.events.StatusEvent;
import flash.media.Microphone;

var count:Number = 0;
var fishCounter:Number = count;
var repeatFish:Number = fishCounter;

var deviceArray:Array = Microphone.names;
trace("Available sound input devices:");

fish_mc.visible = false;
fishFun_mc.visible = false;
blueBirdAnimation_mc.visible = false;
redButterflyAnimation_mc.visible = false;
water_mc.visible = false;

fish_mc.stop();
fishFun_mc.stop();
blueBirdAnimation_mc.stop();
redButterflyAnimation_mc.stop();
water_mc.stop();

for (var i:int = 0; i < deviceArray.length; i++) {
trace(" " + deviceArray[i]);
}

var mic:Microphone = Microphone.getMicrophone();

mic.gain = 60;
mic.rate = 11;
mic.setUseEchoSuppression(true);
mic.setLoopBack(true);
mic.setSilenceLevel(5, 1000);
mic.addEventListener(ActivityEvent.ACTIVITY, this.onMicActivity);
mic.addEventListener(StatusEvent.STATUS, this.onMicStatus);


function onMicActivity(event:ActivityEvent):void {

if (fishCounter < 1) {
if (mic.activityLevel > 10 && mic.activityLevel <= 100) {
blueBirdAnimation_mc.visible = true;
blueBirdAnimation_mc.play();
trace("1. playing Blue Bird");
}

if (mic.activityLevel > 25 && mic.activityLevel < 60) {
redButterflyAnimation_mc.visible = true;
redButterflyAnimation_mc.play();
trace("2. playing Red Butterfly");
}

if (mic.activityLevel > 65 && mic.activityLevel <= 100) {
water_mc.visible = true;
water_mc.play();
fish_mc.visible = true;
fish_mc.play();
count++;
fishCounter = count;
trace("3. playing Fish");
}
}


if (fishCounter > 0 && fishCounter <= 5) {
if (mic.activityLevel > 20 && mic.activityLevel < 100) {
fish_mc.visible = false; fish_mc.stop();
fishFun_mc.visible = true;
fishFun_mc.play();
repeatFish++; fishCounter = repeatFish;
trace ("4. playing repeat fish, #" + fishCounter + " of 5");
}
}


if (fishCounter > 5) {
redButterflyAnimation_mc.visible = false;
fishFun_mc.visible = false;
water_mc.stop();
trace("Microphone interaction complete.");
}

}

The bare bones of this code came from Adobe help files on detecting microphone activity.

Annie.

Mobile Interaction Design

Finished threading the wool through the card and ready to start adding the chimes, hanging elements and add the finishing touches.

Alannagh. 

Fís 2011

This morning I noticed in our blogger stats that we received referral hits from the blog CMDKIT: Projects from Dundalk Institute of Technology Creative Multimedia.

Check out their invitation to the public exhibition: Fís 2011, Celebrating 10 Years

image source: cmdkit.wordpress.com

Annie.

Mobile Interaction

Firstly I researched into fish and butterfly shapes. I then drew and cut them out on paper and cut the shapes from the canvas using the previous cut shapes as reference images.

Alannagh.

I recycled the thick square card from an old project. It is the perfect size for the mobile interactions to hang from. I know we were going to use wood but we can reinforce the piece with wood for the exhibition. I picked this instead as it is easy to work with and attach the wool. I have already started hanging the wool from this main board.

 Mock designs of the hanging mobile interactions

Sun Burst Animation

Thinking about using the sun burst, either at the end of the dead forest or at the final part of the whole animation

Burst from REplay on Vimeo.

Fodhla.

Keyboard Hack Working

Heres a video demonstrating its all working!

Keyboard hack button from REplay on Vimeo.

Hacking keyboard

Siobhan and I hacked a keyboard, we sourced a circuit from a keyboard, some wire and a breadboard from a hardware store and then began to test.  

We attached two wires and the other end to a pin on either side of the circuit to find the combination for letters which are out putted on Microsoft Word. 

We found 5 different combinations therefore 5 different working buttons and glued the into place and secured them with a plastic sheet and clamp. 

When we did this we found there was just 3 working combinations. These are the 3 wires that will connect to the pendulum, the pendulum ha 3 different interactions, we will wire up the 3 triggers into the breadboard along with the wires that connect to the pendulum. 

We tested this with a button so we know that it works, we will make another keyboard hack or arduino for the rock interaction and the windmill interaction. 

This will work in conjunction with the arduino that powers the microphone that Annie has already working. 

Fodhla^

Siobhan^