portfolio

Printable PS3Eye webcam Pan&Tilt mount What you’ll...

technofetishist — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 14:42:00 -0400

Printable PS3Eye webcam Pan&Tilt mount

What you’ll need:
- 3x M3 threaded rods
- 6x M3 nuts and washers
- The file dl.dropbox.com/u/8731/camSupport.scad
- A 3D printer like a makerbot.com or reprap.org

Being an OpenSCAD file we can configure some settings and generate different designs for other cameras as well.

“OpenSCAD is not an interactive modeller. Instead it is something like a 3D-compiler that reads in a script file that describes the object and renders the 3D model from this script file. This gives you (the designer) full control over the modelling process and enables you to easily change any step in the modelling process or make designs that are defined by configurable parameters.”

openscad.org

Catarina Mota

Joel Beloue

Tiago Serra

http://xdatelier.org

http://altlab.org

In a collaboration with our friends at marioneteatro.com we...

technofetishist — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 14:32:24 -0400

In a collaboration with our friends at marioneteatro.com we developed software used during ‘BCC’s theatrical performance.

“BCC is our reflection on the important topic of climate change and other important changes that each of us brings with their daily action.

As an email when we do not know the hidden recipients, our life often seems to be hiding from ourselves the essential. Apparently translucent like a stream of running water, our existence is part of a chaos impossible to understand with our eyes.

Humanity is becoming unbearable and warm the planet, say the macro-invertebrates that we saw under the microscope during this residence.”

.: The first app is just for calibrating the projection circle on stage.

.: The second app consists of particles with some keyboard trigged behaviors and touch interactive trough MSARemote on the iPad (we chose to have absolute control over computer vision techniques). The visuals try to emulate life on a microscope lens.

.: The third app is used to deconstruct this ‘circle of life’.

.: The forth app are just clock pointers, again using MSARemote (TUIO).

.: The fifth app are simple aesthetics river streams, again using MSARemote (TUIO).

The apps were used live on stage.

March 2011

Tiago Serra
Victor Martins
xdatelier.org

processing.org/
code.google.com/p/victamin/
memo.tv/iphone/msaremote

More info (Portuguese):
marioneteatro.com/bcc.html

In a collaboration with our friends at marioneteatro.com we...

technofetishist — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 14:30:34 -0400

In a collaboration with our friends at marioneteatro.com we developed software used during ‘Lab La Bla’s theatrical performance.

“LAB LA BLA arises at this stage of our journey as a further reason to link art and science, this time with particular emphasis on language. Both poetry and science use the word to communicate, but the different objectives that guide it lay profound differences in meaning. In science we recognize the growing significance of accuracy, a basic mechanism linked to its reproducibility. In poetry we recognize the need to multiply meanings, to play with them sometimes even to subversion. In both we recognize the ability to add new words to our lexicon.

With the intention of exploring poetry influenced by the advance of science, both through the introduction of new words as through scientific themes and concepts, this event will explore texts by Miroslav Holub (1923-1998), poet and czech immunologist. A proposed reading and rewriting of the knowledge that science builds. We rely on the interaction with technology to create some of the text through the use of mechanisms for generating semi-random text supplied by Holub’s poems translated by Manuel Portela.”

.: The first app consists of a drawing tool that only lasts for 3 seconds, the “present moment” length, as suggested by Miroslav Holub.

.: The second app explores his texts by pseudo-random generating poems where the original poem structure is maintained but certain word slots are changed by pre-selected correct syntax words.

Both apps were used live on stage.

January/February 2011

Filipe Cruz
Tiago Serra
Victor Martins
xdatelier.org

processing.org/
code.google.com/p/victamin/

More info (Portuguese):
marioneteatro.com/lablabla.html

Want to do 2D or 3D animation but you find it hard and...

technofetishist — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 06:59:00 -0500

Want to do 2D or 3D animation but you find it hard and time-consuming?

Want to build games but the artwork is your bottleneck?

Fortunately we now have low-cost 3D cameras, thanks to Microsoft and PrimeSense.

OSCeleton is basically a DIY motion capture system.

It sends 3D tracked body skeletons trough the OSC protocol so you can build anything easily.

So…

Grab the drivers:

github.com/ avin2/ SensorKinect

Follow the install instructions:

ros.org/ wiki/ ni

Download OSCeleton and run the binary:

github.com/ Sensebloom/ OSCeleton

(use “OSCeleton -h” in the command line for more options)

and the Processing examples in the video:

github.com/ Sensebloom/ OSCeleton-examples

Try Animata too:

animata.kibu.hu/

… and enjoy ;)

SoundTrack:

KC & The Sunshine Band, Shake Your Booty

sensebloom.com

We’ve been frustrated for some time with mobility...

technofetishist — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 12:26:10 -0400

We’ve been frustrated for some time with mobility companies slowness in updating their routes and schedules. There’s also an unwillingness to share their realtime GPS data so, there’s a huge problem we as citizens face when we want to go from one place to the other and have that information readily available in one place.

What if we gave everyone the possibility to add/edit urban mobility routes and realtime positioning of its vehicles? This is what UrbanFlow is all about.

UrbanFlow is a tool for urban mobility management. We think that by giving the means to collaboratively add our own urban mobility networks to the cloud, we can all rely on better and up to date routes of multimodal transportation.

People can obviously vote on the quality of the data being added to the system, making it sustainable.

Data portability is also a worry we have, so we support an open standard format created by Google named Keyhole Markup Language, or KML. But our main purpose is to feed Google Maps, making it available to everyone through the already awesome Google Maps geographic dataset.

Using available GPSs on our cell phones, we can track these vehicles in real time, and since we have the routes we don’t have GPS mislocationing, so ultimately, everyone has the ability to know where they are and improve our quality of life.

sensebloom.com

Special thanks:
Jorge Oliveira Santos
Carlos Ricardo Santos

Soundtrack:
Skankin Pickle - Pickle Fever :: I miss the Bus

FLED-based solar...

technofetishist — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:39:22 -0400

FLED-based solar engine:
solarbotics.net/library/circuits/se_t1_fled.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Tilden

Schmelzolan plastic:
bastelweltcreativ.de/catalog/index.php/cPath/271_275?osCsid=1f440b4143e71a2e34e8b7187c8eb3df
billes-bastelecke.de/Anleitungen/schmelzolan/schmelzolan.htm

Based on:
derstrudel.org/workshops/the-schmelzolan-series
mediamatic.net/page/103996/en
derstrudel.org/robots/schmelzolan-on-overhead

Photos:
flickr.com/photos/tserra/sets/72157623768963154/

-
Mauricio Martins
Rita Carvalho
Tiago Serra

altlab.org
xdatelier.org

Weekend hacklabs sprint project: A CNC made out of old printers...

technofetishist — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:38:00 -0400

Weekend hacklabs sprint project: A CNC made out of old printers and garbage, literally :)

Just a proof-of-concept, still many issues to deal with..

Documentation and Code (in portuguese)
audienciazero.org/docs/public/labs/events/sprints/jan-2010/start

Team: Alan Fachini, Dino Magri, Pedro Ângelo, Ricardo Lobo, Tiago Serra

SoundTrack : Octopus project - Truck

Weekend hacklabs sprint project: Radio Controlled...

technofetishist — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:38:00 -0400

Weekend hacklabs sprint project: Radio Controlled MicroMachines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Machines_(video_games)

Bought some cheap RC cars, removed the controller PCB and connected to an Arduino. Now we could drive them with GameCube steering wheel controllers we had laying around and make a new MicroMachines racing game :)

flickr.com/photos/tserra/sets/72157623315606237/
flickr.com/photos/labcd/sets/72157623325389795/
flickr.com/photos/dinomagri/sets/72157623323802789/

Code and Documentation (in portuguese):
audienciazero.org/docs/public/labs/events/sprints/fev-2010/start

Team: Dino Magri, Pedro Ângelo, Ricardo Lobo, Tiago Serra

MicroMachines original soundtrack.

labcd.org
musa.cc
xdatelier.org

Our new multitouch hardware design with a remake of the classic...

technofetishist — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:37:00 -0400

Our new multitouch hardware design with a remake of the classic Artillery game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_game) using Microsoft’s Silverlight on Windows 7.

For Microsoft.

Soundtrack : “Clear cut” from Lali Puna - “I thought I was over that” (2005)

This is the latest multi-touch installation by SenseBloom...

technofetishist — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:37:00 -0400

This is the latest multi-touch installation by SenseBloom (http://www.sensebloom.com). It’s located in the campus bar at the Computer Science Department of Coimbra University, Portugal.
Created with the intent of letting students and the research community explore new concepts in HCI by designing and creating applications for course projects or just for fun.

In terms of hardware, the display has an area of 2.8m x 1.05m and it consists of 2 XGA ultra short-throw projectors amounting to a total resolution of 2048x768. For the multitouch sensing, this is an LLP setup using 8 infrared lasers, 2 PS3 Eye cameras and a custom compiled version of the excellent CCV tracker, giving us a touch resolution of 1280x480. Also added to the SenseWall are 2 cameras above the display for computer vision applications, a microphone for sound input, speakers for sound output and an RFID reader.

Recorded during our workshop. Demo time at the SenseWall ;)

sensebloom.com

ccv.nuigroup.com
pymt.txzone.net

More photos: flickr.com/photos/tserra/sets/72157623011182177

Soundtrack: Peace Orchestra - Marakesh

3D print of RadioHead’s singer Thom Yorke made with ABS...

technofetishist — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:36:00 -0400

3D print of RadioHead’s singer Thom Yorke made with ABS plastic.

Original point cloud data from Aaron Koblin’s House of Cards (GeoVideo’s 3D scanning system)
code.google.com/creative/radiohead/

Meshed with Point Cloud Skinner script for Blender
blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=144504

Cleanup in MeshLab
meshlab.sourceforge.net/

Made during the Makerbot workshop with Zach Hoeken at Lisbon Tech University
audienciazero.org/cct/3dprinting/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47

Download the file at thingiverse.com/thing:1218

Awesome CreativeCommons post :1
creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/18970

Wired [UPDATE: 9/1/2010]
wired.com/video/latest-videos/latest/1815816633/open-source-3d-printer-turns-designs-into-objects/61029613001

Makerbot Industries
makerbot.com/

xDA hackerspace
xdatelier.org

Originally used to paint abandoned building facades with flowers...

technofetishist — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:36:00 -0400

Originally used to paint abandoned building facades with flowers in the city of Coimbra, Portugal, as a way of protest against urban decay.

Original concept - http://graffitiresearchlab.com

Processing - VS* (http://www.pixelnerve.com/v/)
CCV tracker - nuicode.com/projects/tbeta

xdatelier.org

Done to assist a friend of mine in his chronobiology PhD which...

technofetishist — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:30:00 -0400

Done to assist a friend of mine in his chronobiology PhD which consists of studying the biological rhythms in education.

If we assume that:
- Many cognitive and psychomotor functions (which underlies the learning process) have variations in phase with central body temperature;
- Central body temperature is influenced by the circadian light-dark cycle.

It is admissible to think that academic performance is influenced by the interaction between chronotype (morningness, eveningness and intermediate) and the moment of the day the learning tasks are undertaken.

Only an experimental study, with cognitive and elementary psychomotor functions, will allow us to test this general hypothesis.

This is my attempt to help somehow :1

The program contains 4 tasks, all of them are carried out by a bunch of subjects in a touch screen monitor and all the answers are filed to a .xls file.

1st task : Choice reactions time.
2nd task : Signal detection
3rd task : Digit span
4th task : Trail making test “B”:

1st task : Choice reactions time.
Imagine a sequence of a 7 squares in a monitor all of them are equidistant of another square placed bellow in the middle of the screen.
Put your finger on the base square (the one that is bellow in the middle of the screen) and wait until one square lights. When this happens tap that square as fast as you can.
The aim of this task is to register the 2 types of time: the one since the light shine and the finger is raised; the other is the time taken since the finger is raised until the lit square is tapped.
Notes:
This process should be repeated 10 times.
The lights will show at random.

2nd task: Signal detection
Imagine a screen full of numbers in rows. The numbers are displayed at random.
At first the participant is asked to identify in the screen full of numbers, one (previously presented). Then he signals all the equal numbers in the screen, beginning in the left superior corner and ending in the right inferior corner. In each row there should be 30% of the numbers the participant is asked to identify.
At second stage, the participant will repeat the previous task, but he is asked to identify three different numbers. In each row there should be 10% of each of the 3 numbers the participant is asked to identify, in other words the participant and has to identify 30% of the numbers in each row.
Notes:
All the numbers the participant has to identify are sorted at random
Each row should have 20 numbers
After each row the participant must tap a bottom to inform that that row was concluded.
To accomplish this task 45 seconds are given.
The program should register the right, wrong and omissions of the concluded rows.

3rd task: Digit span
1st phase:
Imagine a screen where series of numbers is being shown. The participant should memorize that sequence and write it on a pad number in the screen
2nd phase:
The task is exactly the same. In this phase the participant has to tap the numbers in the reverse way, from the end to the beginning.
Notes:
The task begins with 2 numbers and will develop until 9 numbers.
In each phase the participant will have two chances. In case he doesn´t succeed the task will be finished. Both opportunities will be exactly the same
The program should file how far the task was successful, mentioning how many numbers were recorded.

4th task: trail making test “B”:
Imagine a screen full of spots displayed at random. On the spots will be written numbers and letters. The participant should link without raising his finger in the following sequence:
1-a-2-b-3-c-4-d-5-e-6-f-7-g-8-h
Note:
The program should register how long the participant takes to finish the task and how many mistakes he made.
The lines drawn by the participant during the task should be presented on the screen.
A print screen of the task should be filed.

Credits:

Carlos Fernandes : Professor Catedrático e Coordenador do Laboratório de Psicologia Experimental e Aplicada da Universidade de Aveiro
José Moura : Aluno de Doutoramento da Universidade de Aveiro (zepedromoura@gmail.com)

“Puddle of Life” is an educational multi-touch...

technofetishist — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:28:11 -0400

“Puddle of Life” is an educational multi-touch installation that was designed for Coimbra’s Science Museum (Darwin exhibit), demonstrating the theory of natural selection, as part of Darwin’s 200th anniversary.
The installation is composed of a round multi-touch table whose surface represents a virtual environment where 4 species of creatures live in. Each of these little creatures have different physical characteristics visually expressed by it’s quantity and/or size: Vision, Locomotion and Fur.

The player interacts with the game by touching the surface. He has to maintain full awareness of his creatures emotions (visually represented by a cartoon like ballon) and using this information to properly choose the mating partners on the control console. This console also allows the user to select the most appropriate descendent from 4 possible mutations, resulting from the reproduction.

The player’s objective is to help the species he controls achieve the highest number of creatures of its kind. Since this world suffers from climate change the player must assure that his creatures are well adapted to this ever-changing environment by choosing the best balance between mating partners and descendants.

The species move in a swarm, but they split when the predator is near. When a creature sees food it warns the nearby siblings and they all run towards it. Of course only the ones who have best locomotion reach it. The vision gives them the ability to see the predator sooner and the ability to see the food further ahead too. The fur is useful to them when the temperature is low but harmful when it’s hot, leading the creature to a shorter lifespan.

The player wins when they reach about 18 living creatures and loses when all of it’s creatures die from cold/hot, predation, famine or old age.

Photos: flickr.com/photos/tserra/sets/72157619458503007/with/3619335559/

Technical Specs:

LLP multi-touch table
CCV tracker - nuicode.com/projects/tbeta
pyMT framework - code.google.com/p/pymt/
Cython - cython.org/
Rabbyt sprite library for pyglet - matthewmarshall.org/projects/rabbyt/
Animation and artwork: Adobe’s AE, Ai and PS with Fasticon.com icons

After some heavy duty data mangling, we’ve mapped...

technofetishist — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:28:00 -0400

After some heavy duty data mangling, we’ve mapped Coimbra’s public transportation network :)

SMTUC (local bus company) provided us with GPS traces but we eventually needed to rewrite them due to GPS mislocationing.

The GoogleEarth KMZ/KML is now publicly available thanks to this effort.
We’ve also submitted to the Google Transit following the Google Transit Feed specification. This way everyone gets this for free and more on Google Maps ;)

In the meantime, we have some great ideas to explore ;)

Interfacing with a 3D mouse: SpaceNavigator
Soundtrack: Fennesz - City Of Light
Kudos : Carlos Lopes (for helping me draw those routes ;))

My master’s thesis project was a web collaboration tool...

technofetishist — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:26:29 -0400

My master’s thesis project was a web collaboration tool that I felt people needed to explore ideas, resolve issues, track progress, and be more productive.
Availability, scalability and highly asynchronous communication were a priority, enabling efficiency and full interactivity.

This is simply a prototype, but I believe it to be a better implementation due to the usage of web standards, best practices, and long-lived http connections instead of polling.

This amounts to the addition of functionality to a web app of this type, which is commonly accomplished through proprietary technologies, thus making the web a conversation and not a stale context.

Note:
Page loads are a bit slow due to my 6 year old powerbook at the time. It had all the daemons running in localhost and the Rails app was generating too much debug info. Sorry about that… :1

Scroll down at vimeo.com/1572082 to download the high quality version.

— Technologies —
PostgreSQL
Lighttpd with mod_fdajax
RubyOnRails
Prototype, Scriptaculous and DojoToolkit
Openfire jabberd
Tigris Subversion server

— Thanks to —
Mário Zenha Rela
Grzegorz Daniluk
Alex Russel

— Soundtrack —
Boss on the Boat - Suzuki - Tosca
John Tomes - Suzuki - Tosca

A replica of IPN business incubator, Coimbra, Portugal, on...

technofetishist — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:24:00 -0400

A replica of IPN business incubator, Coimbra, Portugal, on SecondLife.

The Entrepreneurship Course of Instituto Pedro Nunes makes use of Second Life and Moodle, as mandatory technologies.
The Entrepreneurship Course aims to provide competencies to students about innovation and enterprise management, which will enable them to develop and execute a business idea. The students will learn how to create a business and will be able to do it in Second Life, as a form of practicing what they have learned, by running and managing a business of their own.

Concept idea: Paula Simões
Implementation and design: Tiago Serra

Features:
CAD building replica with company offices
Web‹›SL Moodle integration (Chat,Registration)
Lectures presentation board
Video demo
Environment for entrepreneurship development

Music:
Tosca - Suzuki - The key

(For an annotated video check out the youtube version at youtube.com/watch?v=bmtnzJFBIjY)

Portuguese Prime Minister visits Coimbra, Portugal, IPN business...

technofetishist — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:24:00 -0400

Portuguese Prime Minister visits Coimbra, Portugal, IPN business incubator opening ceremony. Just for laughs.

An interactive installation for the exploration of the forest...

technofetishist — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:22:00 -0400

An interactive installation for the exploration of the forest ground and its living organisms.

Located at the science center of Proença-a-Nova, Portugal

Design and code: Tiago Serra
Modeling and animation: André Caetano (http://boredomsketch.blogspot.com/)

Technicalities:
A modified Sauerbraten 3D engine (http://sauerbraten.org/) was used for the immersive environment.

Three Sharp GP2D12 IR sensors are responsible for sensing the user hands, controlling the player movements. The Parapin Linux userland library (http://parapin.sourceforge.net/) was used to feed the PC through the parallel port with the sensorial data.

The Linux kernel was patched with the Tickless kernel patch since I needed low-latency sensor communication: “the high-res timers feature (CONFIG_HIGH_RES_TIMERS) enables POSIX timers and nanosleep() to be as accurate as the hardware allows (around 1usec on typical hardware). This feature is transparent - if enabled it just makes these timers much more accurate than the current HZ resolution.”

This project was done in a 2 month period between February and May 2007.

Design considerations:
Needed to be fun, educational and resilient enough to handle lots of kids fighting for it ;)