Tangible User Interfaces – networked cameras

Uff. TUI course is over. It was a long month with a lot of work and many moments of frustration.

We spent first week on concept development. Initially we had a lot of problems figuring out what we really wanted do. Before starting this course I thought that we will be working on some multitouch or reactable stuff. But to my surprise brief for this course forbad us from using screens in our projects. Hmmmmmmm.

Also during the first week we were introduced to laser cutter.

This wonderful machine can cut any shape you can imagine and draw in a vector graphics program from paper, cardboard and even plexi glass up to 5mm. It can also engrave on wood and aluminum.

We had a lot ideas, some bad and boring, other even worse. Finally after looking for inspiration in nature we decided to create object that can work on their own but at the same time they are part of a bigger group. Something like insects. This way idea of networked cameras was born. Project code name “many eyes”. It was a simple idea. We have several cameras, when you click one of them, every other camera takes a photo at the same time. As we experienced later, simplest ideas a hardest to implement…

To better explain our idea during reviews in the end of the week we quickly developed some scenarios (drawings by Ujjval) :

During second week we focused on refining our idea and building an experience prototype.

I started by programming a Flash web application.

You opened a web page that displayed a live capture from your webcam. When you pressed a button a picture was taken on each computer viewing this page at this time. Pictures were saved and send to the server where you could watch them on another site. We did some test and even tried to shoot matrix like photos but laptops are too big and too clunky to fully convey the experience.

A the same time Ujjval (we were together in a team) prepared some wooden mockups.

If they were small enough they could be even wearable. Imagine these crazy photos if you could take it with you to the party

If you think they are too small to be possible to create look at this chewing gum sized camera.

Ujjal also taught me how to make an origami camera. If you want to make one for yourself here is a tutorial on Flickr : Origami camera.

Another way to simulate the experience was to use already existing cameras. So we decided to use several SLR cameras to trigger photos by using remote controls. Original remote controls are quite expensive so we built our own You need just a couple of wires and optocoupler. After a few minutes of experimenting and checking which pins in remote control plug do what we need we ended up with this:

In the final test we had two Arduino boards talking to each other wirelessly. One with button and second one connected to the ‘remote control’. It worked

It was end of second week and we still weren’t happy with our idea.