Consept Image!

Project outline

Our project idea is to create an interactive environment that will be projected onto a wall this environment will be interactive a user will be able to pick up and drop different objects and characters in the environment.

We will have to think about gravity and produce smooth animations.

Examples of play: The user will pick up an object from the scene and be able to place it somewhere else in the area there are several different ways we can go with this idea we could create different scenes one could be having to build bridges and lead characters across others could be puzzles in which you have to make a chain reaction happen to complete a task another could be like a drawing tool.

In this week’s session we went into the workshop to see how our LED grid could be made. Using a laser cutter we can make the casing from Perspex or wood. I personally think Perspex would make a better housing for the LEDs.

We also watch a piece by Jim Campbell. Church On Fifth Avenue, 2001 Custom electronics A matrix of 32 x 24 (768) pixels made out of red LEDs displaying a pedestrian and auto traffic scene in NY from an off street perspective. There is a sheet of diffusing plexiglass angled in front of the grid. As the pedestrians move from left to right the figures gradually go from a discrete representation to a continuous one (or metaphorically from a digital representation to an analog one). This is the link

http://www.jimcampbell.tv/

We then watched Design for life, In an effort to find a new generation of British design talent, Philippe Starck, one of the world's best known product designers, invites 12 hopefuls to a school of design he has set up in Paris. This was quite an interesting insight into the design process.

Idea 2 using a projector instead of a tv the camera would also be involved for movement tracking this idea has the same camera placement problem but also the projector could be blocked if not at the right angle.

Setup Idea 1

Setup idea 1 to get our interactive world setup this idea involves a large tv to be hooked up to a mac and camera the image of the world will be on screen and the camera will track the users movement. problems that occur with this is camera placement if the user blocks the camera this will make the application useless we could place the camera on an angle and use a glove that the camera recognizes as a cursor for more precise play.

We then learned about using sensors to create a numerical output to be used as variables in processing or to change the output on LEDs. In the following week we created a grid in processing that could be used to switch on an LED light that was assigned to a grid position.

Unfortunatly we are missing photos since my phone died :(

In later sessions we Started to advance to using sensors initially this was to dim or brighten the LED and control the size of a circle in processing but in later sessions we progressed to making a simple pong game using the sensors as controls for the paddle.

Process and production our team have been getting to grips with arduino over the first couple of weeks of processing and production, our first sessions involved creating code to light up an LED matrix we wrote the code into Arduino and wired up the LEDs to the “bread board” this in the initial stage light one light on a constant glow. We then extended the code to get 3 lights flashing in a timed sequence.