new website

Long time no post. I offer you the usual excuse that I'll post soon. But with a bit of cool news for me. I now have a propper domain and site:

http://www.stevenharrap.com

Thought I'd go for the most obvious name possible.

Cheers.

PC2 - final week

This is it! - the final week of Personal computing 2. Our jacket is taking shape with some very well finished stich work from Fredrick and Sofie. Our touch sensors seem to be working and we have a finished circuit board ready to be placed inside of the jacket. Getting power to the product is still a bit of an issue and we're considering fitting a belt of 9 volt batteries but this solution has electrocuson writen all over it for me so I recon we'll stick to leaving the arduino to be powered by the computer via a very long usb cable.

As this is the last post I'll make on this subject you'll (hopefully) be able to find what the finished article looks like in "the Lab" on my website. Cheers - Steven.

Finland last weekend

Was in Finland last weekend seeing a friend of Dads, Peter, for the first time. They are friends from childhood but I've never met Peter before so it was a little odd for the first few minutes but after that it was a greate weekend. No snow which is a pitty and Peter was eternally sorry for the state of weather.

PC2 - a week of trials

After a week of hair pulling and grim determination I think we have success. The two big aims for the week where making a touch sensor that works (this is a black art at best) and figuring out some way of heating up an area approximatly 10cm square.

The touch sensors are grounded plates of alfoil with a small, insulated area that is attached to an intergrated circuit that messures capaciatance and thus generates a signal when the sensor is touched. These started the week being complicated paper and alfoid affairs that provided intermitant success and then failure. But, de dammed the consiquences, we went on to produce a prototype jacket with all touch sensors attached - it didn't work to well but we learn more about the layout of the jacket and more about why the sensors didn't work.

So back to repeating the sensor protyping. Come thursday and its not looking so good - the jacket it pretty much an arial or dead to the world as fair as sensing touch goes. So we pack it in and go home. But today turned the corner, maybe, we made a good touch sensor today. Based on what an other group did and a simpler design it seems to work pretty reliably - no interferance and no random reads. Perhaps it will be good.

Today also brought some success with creating heat. When the Jacket is touched back heats up and we needed some means of doing this. We bought some heat wire some time ago in an attempt to produce a result from it. Heat wire is thing, uninsulated wire which gets warm when a current is passed through it. We've managed to produce some resuslt out of a small peice of wire but today produced a different solution to this problem.

We're using a very low resistance transistor to switch current accross the heat wire useing the PWM port in the Arduino. This works fine - but the transistor gets very hot (even hotter than the wire) and it has a metle backing So it occured to me that we should ditch the wire and just use the transistors heat as the heat source. So by attaching a heat sink made from folder copper sheet a reasonable are of mettle can be made warm with less fuss than the wire. This idea has still be tested with a larger plate but i think it could work with a plate which is around 6cm square.

Anyway we'll see. Appologies to those that read this and think I'm mad Its late and the end of a long week Cyas.d

Physical Computing 2 - this weeks results

Physical Computing 2 - weeks results

Hi this might be a bit dense for some of you out there. Each week I need to keep a blog entry of what I'm doing in this unit. Until now I've been a bit slack with these so they'll start to appear more often now.

After coming back from a quick holiday we had good success. Up until today our group has had lots of problems with the touch sensor circuits interfering with each other. Each IC was producing strange frequency effects in the powersupply that fed them both. With help from the tutor we included a high and a low range capacitor to smooth out the frequency variations and the interfence stopped.

We're beginning to have some success with proper touch sensor design. Better earthing techniques will, hopefully, produce an even better response. We've purchased a shirt to prototype the sensors in. Any we may attach some of them tommorrow.

The multiplexor is next up. We have built one but up until now it hasn't been of much use without the touch sensor ICs working properly. Tommorrow we'll wire them up and see the result. The mutliplexor will allow us to get more data channels to the Arduino board than it has physical ports to handle.

A trip to Grannys

Just got back from a trip to my grandmothers in the far northwest of Ireland. It's a trek that I've done many times before but I thought you all might enjoy some of my experiences in the slightly sureal world of that part of Ireland.

Lisfannon is the name of the farm my grandmother and uncle live on. I'm not sure who named it (possibly my grandfather) and it doesn't have a post code. When your in the area and you want to tell someone where you are staying you say 'Lisfannon' and they knowingly knod their head. Sometimes they say "Yourdorothyssonthen?" and I say "yes" because I think they just asked me a question. These people are Irish farmers and they have a language all their own. Statements can be questions and questions can be statements - always pay attention to ramblings because they can end in a "?" and you don't want to have continualy say "pardon?".

When I was living in Ireland I used to catch the bus up to the farm from Dublin but this time I decided I'd go a bit up market and hire a car for the weekend. I've never driven in Ireland and getting out Dublin airport on rainy night is a baptism of fire. Indicators, lane markings and speed limits could best be considered as suggestions to your average Irish driver. Best to stay to near the left hand side mostly in the lane and somewhere near the speed limit - just as long the car isn't in the hedge then you're doing well. I'm glad I took the automatic option on the car -navigating and changing gear at 110km would have had me in enraged tears. There are enourmas complicated roundabouts getting out of Dublin and after the third one I just put the foot down, hoped for the best and dared not look in the rear veiw mirror to see what carnidge that lay behind me. Baring cross country course corrections I got on my way and found myself at the farm about 4 hours later.

The farm. Sitting on the gentle slope of a huge valley the farm looks over a broad inland water chanel. With rolling green fields and golden barely at the hight of the summer. The back of the house is surrounded by a lush garden and edged by accient oaks. The front looks over the yard and fields to a patch work hillside of properties and farms. The view is only slightly mared by Johns concrete mannure catchment bin installed two years ago. John is Grandmas son (my uncle) and owns and runs the farm origianlly run by my grandfather. He was born and brought up on the farm along with my mother and aunt. I think, perhaps, that working on the farm for more than 50 years creates a very practical approach to questions of form verse function.

I usually turn up on weekends so, by tradition, I join one of them on a trip to the church. I'm not a religous person and I would best describe myself as agnostic - I'll place a bet both ways till I know better. The church is protestant so it's no messing about with bread, insence and whatnot - get in, sing a few songs, listen to the minister and get out. Practical - no fuss. People don't tend to get all wishy-washy about the love of god etc etc up that way. I suspect that living a life between two (or more) parties each trying to blow the other up in the name of political and religious beliefe has people playing their cards very close to their chests. So anyway a visit to the church is very briefe with John - get in a minute before start and out the door as soon as it finishes. I'd like to hang around - sometime I meet relatives etc but Johns already off around the corner to the car and if I don't catch up I'll be walking home.

This particular weekend I decided that I wanted to drive up the mountain behind the house in my shiny new hire car. This mountain has tempted me many times before but I've never had the means to get up it. John tried to take me one day but the roads where closed. There is an intricate set of roadways that leads up the mountain and only sesoned locals who know these hidden paths can provide reasonable directions. Upon the dubious directions of my grandmer (take the first right after the bridge in the town up the road and then just follow that road) I ended up back where I started. I did try twice but without success - I shall ask my uncle to take me next time. He may tell me there is nothing to see up there but, dam it, I shall try.

So instead I went to Malin Head, the most northerly and bitterly cold point in Ireland. Here they grow sheep and grannit. The North Atlantic relentlesly grinds away at the farms which perch themselves as close as possible to the churing ocean. I got my car as far north as possible (to a little lookout) and walked around for as long as I could bare the wind chill. It is, however, a wild and beautiful place and in the middle of summer the tough grass sends forth wild flowers that make the place truly unique.

PC2 - first ideas

We had a group presentation in Physical Computing 2 on Monday of our idea for the main project of this semester. My groups idea is for a semitransperant coat filled with tiny lights called L.E.Ds. When an area of the coat is touched the lights in that area are turned on and then slowly turn off. The idea is to leave a lasting impression of physical contact. The user can also touch a lit area to turn off the lights instantly - as if brushing away the unwanted contact.

I'm slightly worried at the prospect of wiring this sucker up but my group mate seems intent on following through - i don't think he has any real idea of how much work is involved. Oh well - think I'll try and talk him into something a little more feasable.

One aspect that was very suprising was the level of finish the projects showed for a situation where only a general idea was required. The ideas themselves weren't quite there yet but the level of effort put into the flash animations and video work was impressive. Very cool stuff.

Chocolate Tops

Thanks to Mum who supplied me with recipie for her chocolate tops. I produced a batch this weekend gone and were enjoyed by all. CTs consist of a biscuit base, caramel centre and dark chocolate top. These beauties were a highlight of Gills and my childhood.

The recipie however will stay a secret if only because it gives me an edge over any other desert in Ronnan apart from Heidies Banoffie pie which is in a class unto itself.

Helsingborg vs Helsingor

I went to Helsingborg and Helsingor last weekend (14th October) to have a look around with a couple of friends from my dorm. The castle and towns were beautiful and we went from Helsingor, in Denmark, to Helsingborg, in Sweden, by ferry in the early evening as a golden sun set on the horizon. Photos are still in the camera.

We explored the local castle and ate hotdogs and beer for lunch. Later in the afternoon we discovered the Australian Wine shop which sent Heidy (Australian) into an exstatic delight at the prospect of getting her hands on six pack of coopers.

The effect of Swedents high taxes on alchohol are really obvious after walking around Helsingor. It appears that Helsingors reason for being is to sell cheap booze against Helsingborgs inflated prices. No-one in their right mind would buy booze from Helsingborg. If Sweden ever trashed the System-bolarget (goverment bottle shop monopoly) Helsingors economy might well colaspe overnight.

PC2ESSAY : The power code doesn't go with my top

Preface

The following is an essay requested by my lecturer for my Physical Computing course. So the subject matter and language is more formal than what my cosy readership is accustomed to. This medium, however, is a blog and the discourse of the blog is not, typically, a traditional academic style. So here comes an uneasy truce.

This essay is a discussion of the thesis by Erik Sandelin & Magnus Tortstensson Digital Peacock Tails available at http://www.unsworn.org/dpt/digital_peacock_tails.pdg (pages 15-30). I will discuss some of the ideas raised by the thesis and my point of view. And there might be pictures.

The power code doesn't go with my top...

Digital Peacock Tails (DPT) discusses why we do the strange things that we do - why we wear uncomfortable cloths and do terrible things to our bodies. DPT presents examples of organizations and people within the area of interactive design, art and experimentation who play with these ideas. Some are searching for the next killer application such as wearable computing and others want to subvert and distort well understood places and things to make us reconsider the nature of what we think is 'normal'.

We are, and have always been, what anthropologist Ted Polhemus calls "the decorated monkey" (1). We plaster paint on our bodies, put holes in places that should not have holes, an entire universe of possibility exists on top of our heads and our choice of dress can say a thousand words. Why we do these things is linked to symbols of independence, tribal acceptance and signs of authority. DPT argues that women who wear high heals do so as symbol of pride and power - independence and proof that such an inefficient item can be afforded. The high-heal is absolutely useless for anything else. Fashion circles consider the heal an extension of the feminine curve extenuating the figure but I suspect we could convince ourselves that a plank of wood strapped to each foot is equally inefficient and encumbering and therefore an item of beauty.

Doing useless things and performing extremely dire alterations to our bodies been taken a step further by Perl. Perl has taken to extreme corset wearing and has completely crushed his lower abdomen. Following in the theme of inefficient clothing as a sign of independence Perl must be the most independent man I've ever seen.

Extending our bodies by augmenting them with external devices is an activity we have pursued since the first person figured out that a big palm leaf could carry more berries than a cupped hand. Then backpacks, belts, portable tools, clothes with pockets, pouches all allowed us able more independence - to be able to take what we need to the spot rather than drag the items in question back to home. The calculator is a good example of a modern device made small and portable to allow a person to do more in one spot. If you consider the laptop computer an extension of the traditional calculator then the amount a person can do with just the items he or she can carry is impressive. But the key is personal augmentation and the average laptop is on the verge of reasonably portable. They may seem small but try carrying one to work or university on a regular basis. The next killer application is supposed to be the wearable computer and an army of industrial designs, fashion designers and electronic engineering interests are mounting behind the drive to make the idea reality. But wearable clothing has provided a limited commercial success. The hardware is still fairly clunky, the best power supplies that can drive a portable computing are heavy and the idea of radical hardware modification to suit clothing is prohibitively expensive unless you can afford mass production.

I propose that one major factor in the lack of success for augmenting our clothes with high tech gadgetry is the psychology of fashion. Clothes are purchased with the expectation of being disposed within a year or two at best. They are purchased to suit the season and in quantity to be mixed and matched as the situation demands. The current ideas wearable technology is that the clothing should be fashionable and attractive. But this locks us into specific and expensive fashion apparel which we would have to wear for at least a year or more and be agreeable with our entire wardrobes. This might seem a bit anal but the notion of 'gone with season' is what drives the fashion industry. Ultimately I believe this kind of technology has already arrived via our mobile phones and has spread up the sides of our faces with the cordless ear peice.

A social aspect that arises from wearable computing devices is the effect on social interaction. The primary purpose of wearable computing is for communication and, if this new technology takes off, then the potential for disruptive behavior via interruption sky-rockets. Voice communication, micro visuals, text messaging and real-time textual chatting converging in a personal communication device could well be the end for uninterrupted person to person communication. To counter these effects DPT proposes social mobiles to modify people’s behavior to make it less disruptive. Variable level of electric shock depending on how loudly the person at the other end is speaking or The Musical Mobile that requires the user to play the tune of the phone number they wish to call. While not practical in all situations it would be a wonderful world if they could be enforced within specific situations such as meetings or lectures.

(1) Polhemus, Ted (1996) The Customized Body London: Serpents Tail. p.7