Audio Ping Pong

“When you put on the headphones, you hear a sound that is cycling through a sequence indicating its approach. The sound is somewhere on the left-right axis in the headphones. If the sound is to your left, you have to tilt your head to the left until the sound is centered. If you tilt your head (the paddle) to the right position in time, you hit the ball an continue, the ball’s approach speeding up each time. If you fail to hit the ball a buzzer and light go off to punish you and the game is over.
I am interested in using senses differently and getting people to focus on their senses in novel, interesting and engaging ways.
My first implementation is very rudimentary. My sound generation capabilities are limited to square waves at full volume so there isn’t true panning – just left, right and centered. In addition to real panning, I would like volume control to indicate the ball’s approach rather than the tone sequence I have now. I need to figure out what kind of RC circuit would smooth the PWM output to act like volume control, or use a digital potentiometer.”

Warning: playing audio ping pong in public while using a bluetooth headset will most likely make you appear quite insane – awesome. Audio Ping Pong

Hi there!

Well hello there hackers! I’m the new kid on the block, and I’ll be helping out here with the Blog while the brains of this operation get some work done!

My ‘people name’ is Jenna, but you can call me Blueberry. I have a strong background in software, and like many of you, I’m learning about the hardware side of things now. I’m also a user interface nut, lover of all things making technology more intuitive. Naturally a lover of Mac and inseparable from my trusty jailbroken iPod Touch. Also a lover of all things Bluetooth, though I’m starting to eye those ZigBee modules with curiosity. Oh, and horses. Everything is horse related. Everything.

My first project is a curious combination of a Siamese Fighting Fish and the Ardrumo design. First I’ll be using the Ardrumo software to translate fish wiggles in to Midi Music, and if that works out well, I’d like to investigate fish operated robotics!

~ Blueberry :-)

Arduino POV

bluesterror has made a nice persistance of vision display using an Arduino. Check it out here.

PowerFlower

Check out the PowerFlower brought to you by the folks at Leiden University. The Flower Power is “an electrical and mechanical flower, that charges it’s battery with solar panels, and searches for the sun with that same batteries. so: a self sustaining flower.”

Touching The Meshverse

The Meshverse Journal have a great post on connecting physical interfaces to virtual worlds like Second Life. No surprise that the Arduino NG features heavily! But imagine what you could do with an Arduino Bluetooth!

Automatic Mirror Ball System

Check out the Arduino NG based Automatic Mirror Ball System over DSP

Coders need to learn hardware hacking NOW

Slides form a 20:20 talk at XTech 2007

Google Earthwalk with Arduino at Berlin Designmai 2007

A nice visualization that combines Google Maps with an Arduino.