Making Toys

Updates from April, 2009 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

• 

  Yury Gitman 1:47 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Constellation Skirt – Prototypes 

  <   Look and Feel  >

  The style: classic dirndl skirt (gathered fabric with an elasticized waistband)

  The fabric: outer skirt will be semi-sheer, thin navy blue china silk, low sheen; inner structure will be more structured cotton broadcloth for volume

  
  

           
  

  
  

  
  

  <    Implementation  >

    Casseiopeia

    Cancer

    Ursa Minor

  here's the code

  
  

  At the moment, the three circuits are incomplete and the constellations may be activated when the user's movements cause the components to fall into place and complete the circuit. I am also interested in using the Aruduino capSense library to use human touch to activate the constellations.

  
  

  <    Role in User's Life   >

  
  
  

  Rate this:
   

  Reply Cancel reply

  Required fields are marked *

  Name *

  Email *

  Website

  Notify me of new comments via email.

  Notify me of new posts via email.

  Δ

• 

  Yury Gitman 1:40 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Stress doll prototypes 

  Role

  

  Look and Feel

  

  Implementation

  Testing the force and flex sensors to trigger sounds on the computer through processing.

  http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4262135&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00adef&fullscreen=1

  Rate this:
   
• 

  Yury Gitman 1:06 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Role of Nester the baby lockness 

  Nester is for boys and girls 4-10 years old and for the curious (tear you toy apart to look whats inside 10-14yrs).  A typical user description below.

  Billy turns 8 years old this year and his mother is thinking of buying him a cool toy.  He plays videos games, rides his bike and enjoys swimming as well.  His typical toys are action figure types as well as the typical laser guns and light saber swords.  Though Billy is 8 years old, he is afraid of the dark still.  He would prefer to have a soft toy that will make him feel safer in his room at night.  He is the only child so there is no younger or older brother to keep him company in his room.  Mom and Dad are getting tired of letting Billy sleep in their room when he hears creaking sounds of the house settlling.  His parents thing
  Nester the baby Lockness would be perfect for him, as Nester is a plush to that can go wherever Billy goes
  namely:

  Refrigerator in the middle of the night for a drink of water
  Restroom at night (he is scared of the toilet flush sounds)

  Nester wakes up whenever Billy talks to Nester or squeezes his tail. Nester stays on for 3 minutes and slowly turns off giving Billy enough to to calm down and fall to sleep, use the restroom, or walk to the fridge.  Nester allows Billy to sleep in Peace as well as his parents.

  Rate this:
   
• 

  Yury Gitman 1:01 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  :::First Prototype of Colony::: 

  :::Look and feel:::

  I try different fabrics for softness and for translucency since there are going to be LED inside the Nicos.
  I decided to utilized the ultra suede for their faces and the soft brushed cotton like material for their bodies. Their bodies are flat now but in the next interation they will be more cone like with a blat bottom that would I allow them to stand on the magnetic surface with the relay switch facing down.

  

  :::User Interaction:::

  Nicos have their natural environment where they make little sounds to chat to each other and glow in different colors.

  

  Nicos also can become your friend if you are gentle with them. If you are, then they will feel comfortable and glow and make little sounds , similar to those they make when among their kind.

  

  Rate this:
   
• 

  Yury Gitman 12:08 pm on April 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Mometer (momi) 

  Implementation prototype:
  In this  implementation I have tried to test the circuit and the code by using a POT. Further the POT will be replaced by temperature sensor.

  http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4261199&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1
  momi implementation prototype1 from Ira Goldberg on Vimeo.
  Here is the code

  
  

  Look&feel+Role Prototype:
  http://a.parsons.edu/~goldi216/mometer/MomiSketch.swf

  Rate this:
   
• 

  Yury Gitman 11:18 am on April 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Myriam – the sound of dancing project (+blueprints) 

  The sound of dancing is an experiement to capture and enhance the sound of dancers while they are performing. Microphones will be integrated in their costumes and mouth, triggered my their dance and interaction.

  The sound of dance is a team project with dancers Zack Winokur and Michelle Mola and their current team. 

  1. Zack Winokur and Michelle Mola

  Michelle Mola's website

  
                                                              Picture by Collin Lafleche
  

  You can watch below their current performance, where in the end Michelle has a microphone in her mouth that display her breathing and other mouth sounds. The system not being stable enough, the you can hear as well the cables moving, which create an interesting sound.

  Zack and Michelle's perform with few music. It is the sound of their own dancing that makes the music.

  http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=4259589&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

  Zack Winokur and Michelle Mola from maryam aboukhater on Vimeo.

  For this performance, they added the paper sheet Zack is tearing off of this jacket.

  They want their show to evolve and experiment new ways of dancing.

  2. The sound of dance

  How to create new unheard sounds from their dancing?

  How to enhance their own movement to make music during their performance?

  How can this music be a whole part of the performance?

  And how this music will change and create new ways of performing?

  For this project, I will be adding material to the costumes, working with the costume designer for the integration of the circuit.

  

  
                                                              Pictures by Collin Lafleche
  

  In the performance, Michelle is wearing a structure up her
  shoulders. It was originally supposed to be covered with fabric to hide
  her head, with her arms going out from holes. But the fabric wasn't
  stable enough, so she kept only the structure for the show.

  I want to put back this fabric to pursue their idea of "Balloon girl".

  

  In Michelle's structure, an Led would be on top to illuminate the hole balloon. The Led would fade on and off, visualizing her breath.

  For both Michelle and Zack, I want to use a conductive fabric that will be torn off during the performance. The fabric on, the microphone will be on. They will be turned off as the fabric is off.

  Some parts will be permanent, and used as switches for the dancers to turn on and off as they dance.

  They will turn on different microphones set on various parts of their bodies.

  

  Rate this:
   
• 

  Yury Gitman 4:54 pm on April 20, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Wow! Way to go, Nick! Engadget 

  http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/20/video-theremin-esque-digital-synth-sure-to-get-brian-wilson-up/

  Rate this:

  joe is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
  • 

    joe 7:58 pm on April 20, 2009 Permalink | Reply

    NICK YOU ARE MY HERO. AND MAKE BLOG TOO. i want to MAKE love to nick. someone write an instructable on how to do this for me immediately.
    http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/04/touchless_digital_synth_takes_after.html
    7:46

• 

  Yury Gitman 5:46 pm on April 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  homework assigned 4/17 

  1. 3-4 prototypes
      -    1 implementation
      -    1 look and feel
      –    1 role

  2. 3 more blogs –>

  Rate this:
   
• 

  Yury Gitman 3:43 pm on April 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Tweetlite and Diver Seen on the internet 

  

  Link

  Used original content

  

  Link

  Uses content from Boing Boing

  

  Link

  Link via Boing Boing Gadgets. Uses original content.

  

  Link

  Uses the content I sent.

  

  Link

  Uses the content I sent.

  

  Link

  Uses original content.

  

  Link

  Copy/pasted content from my blog.

   

  Link

  References Boing Boing with an original line.

   

  Link

  Feed from Boing Boing.

   

  Link

  Feed from Boing Boing.

   

  Link

  Feed from Boing Boing.

  Rate this:
   
• 

  Yury Gitman 3:37 pm on April 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  spatialized umbrella on Arduino Show 

  

  Here is a very cool project idea.The raidrop on the umbrella activated
  sound. When the the rain falling down the raindrop on the umbrella
   samples play the music in a loop, each speaker playing their own
  unique raindrop. The LEDs light up the speaker playing at that moment.
  The tempo of the loop is controlled by a
  long-range Sharp Infrared range finder. The closer an object is to you,
  the faster the loop plays. If an object is close enough and a threshold
  is reached, a lightning sequence is triggered.[Link] | [via]

  http://www.arduinoshow.com/show/2009/04/spatialized-umbrella-v01/

  —–
  Great that this site also chose a different image from my blog to post on theirs.  Again the description is not exactly 100% accurate, but still great that they thought the concept was cool.

  Rate this:
   
• 

  Yury Gitman 3:35 pm on April 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Custom Textile and Doll supply 

  Textile printing
  http://www.spoonflower.com/welcome

  Toy and Doll Supply Catalog
  http://crscrafts.com/

  Less EMF
  http://lessemf.com/
  

  Rate this:
   
• 

  Yury Gitman 3:35 pm on April 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Linkbacks to Squaremin 

  

  Original Content: Nick sent word of his digitally squarewave take on the legendary theremin instrument – hmmm, a Squaremin perhaps?

  ……

  The highly portable fold-up case design is hot! Check the source code + related media on Nick’s blog.

  Unfortunately there was no picture of my theremin posted? 😦

  Links:
  Original:
  http://diyhow2.com/?p=156
  Original post on different links:
  http://daily.ocular-witness.com/?p=2064
  http://clickworldnews.com/2009/04/17/touchless-digital-synth-takes-after-theremin/
  http://www.developages.com/touchless-digital-synth-takes-after-theremin/61982

  Rate this:
   
• 

  Yury Gitman 3:32 pm on April 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  spatialized umbrella on Cool Circuits 

  
  

  This is a cool project idea. When the the rain
  falling down the raindrop on the umbrella  samples play the music in a
  loop, each speaker playing their own unique raindrop. The LEDs light up
  the speaker playing at that moment. The tempo of the loop is controlled
  by a long-range Sharp Infrared range finder. The closer an object is to
  you, the faster the loop plays. If an object is close enough and a
  threshold is reached, a lightning sequence is triggered.

  http://www.coolcircuit.com/gadgets/2009/04/13/spatialized-umbrella-v01/

  —

  Great that this blog chose a different image to post on their entry.  Their description is completely original, and not necessarily the most accurate. unfortunately, they did not mention mapduino, but at least my blog is linked.

  Rate this:
   
• 

  Yury Gitman 3:31 pm on April 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Crunchy Beats on Instructables 

  

   http://www.instructables.com/id/Crunchy-Beats/

  Decepticon says

  #1) Where are the beats? All I hear is an Atari tone generator.
  #2) So you put photo-resistor in a bag of chips (or not necessarily in
  a bag of chips considering someone was doing it with a
  sandwich)…maybe a better explanation is in order.
  #3) Your title is way misleading.

  I think It's actually a very constractive comment, thank youDecepticon, you defiently right I need to post a better explanation.

  Rate this:
   
• 

  Yury Gitman 3:30 pm on April 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Myriam – What unexpected things happened when you created your design Files? 

  While creating my design file for the "hugging bear, I realized how complex my simple project was. 

  The rough idea on paper was becoming more and more concrete: I had to plan the size of the bear, the materials, what motors and how they were connected. I wanted my bear to have a conductive fabric on its belly to trigger the motors in the arms.

  But when I was thinking about all these facts, I figured out that I thought the idea of the bear was fun, but just fun. I didn't want to make it because I felt my concept wasn't strong enough and I didn't have enough time to make it as I wanted to in the short time frame we had to make this project.

  My bear needed several prototypes and user testings to have a good and human feeling of "hugg".

  Most of all, I wanted to make a project that people would actually use. And I was looking for better ways to use capacitance sensing.

  During this process, I got to a contemporary dancing performance. The two dancers danced without sound, and they used a microphone in their mouth to enhance their own sound while performing. I went to see them after the show and talked to them about other ways to play with their own sound as music.

  I am going to meet them in the next days to figured out new ways for performing with sensors in their costumes and how we can play with their theme. And see how their dancing will evolve as well with the integrated sensors.

  Rate this:
   
• 

  Yury Gitman 3:30 pm on April 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  Projects on blogs 

   

  Here's what they wrote:

  [Steve] is in the MFA Design and Technology program at parsons, and
  as part of his studies, has built a couple really interesting projects.
  First, the Beat boxxx,
  as seen in the video above, is an 80’s retro looking portable beat
  looper. You create and loop your beats at the time of playing using
  simple hand gestures. The look is great, for those who enjoy cardboard
  and magic marker, though we think some tonal variation and possibly a
  wider pitch variation would really make this fun.

  His second project is Speak to Me/Breathe.
  This project was meant to be a commentary on security in our daily
  information. He is visually displaying the braille symbols to spell out
  his emails. If any person were to spend the effort, they could decipher
  his emails. The finish on this project is quite nice, you can see a
  video of the display after the break.

  Here's a link to the article:

  LINK 

  This site is cool and I've gotten a lot of comments, mostly positive.

  

  Here's what they wrote:

  Mixing something on the net to use in the real world is a very interesting idea. Stephen Varga sent me a great project. He writes :

  Here is a link to my first arduino-based project. I’d
  love if I could get a post and possibly some comments to help me
  improve the design.
  Speak to Me/Breathe
  is a project that shows communication over time by displaying my
  incoming email messages in Braille format on a large LED driven
  interface. The project is both an exploration of Braille as a visual
  6-bit binary form of communication vs its normal tactile form, as well
  as a commentary on information security and encryption.

  Thanks Stephen Varga.

  Here is a link to the site:
  LINK

  They posted it super quick and made some nice comments, however I don't know how many people are actually reading this blog yet since ts pretty new. Regardless its pretty cool.

  Rate this:
   
• 

  Yury Gitman 3:28 pm on April 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  spatialized umbrella on hackaday 

  

  Reader [Joe Saavedra] sent in his latest project: the spatialized umbrella.
  The base of each umbrella rib features an LED, speaker, and distance
  sensor. These are connected to an ATMega168 microcontroller running the
  Arduino environment. The IR sensor triggers a rain drop sound based on
  proximity. Shorter distances mean more droplets are played. The sounds
  are generated using a lookup table and the digital pins. You can see
  the demo video embedded below.

  Using the Arduino environment without the associated board is part of another idea that [Joe] is working on. The MapDuino Project
  uses the standard Arduino hardware for programming, but then transfers
  the chip to a more barebones circuit in target project. They based
  their initial work on the ITP breadboard Arduino.

  http://hackaday.com/2009/04/12/spatialized-umbrella/

  ———————

  really happy that this got posted. Best of all, they linked to the mapduino project on hackduino.org  .  This was my response to the comments and the post that i made on the site:

  thanks all, for the great comments (even the “constructive” ones),
  and thanks so much to Eliot for posting this! I love the idea of having
  actual raindrops determine the attack, frequency and pitch of the
  sounds, although at the moment I can’t think of the technology that
  would get that done…

  If I could just make one correction – I did indeed use an ITP post
  as the basis for the HackDuino project, however, I am an MFA Design and
  Technology student at Parsons, so Eliot, if you are reading this, do
  you think you could also tag this post with “parsons” or “parsons MFA
  DT”. thanks, again.

  Josh is absolutely correct – MapDuino is completely top-down. There
  was never a question of which came first – the microcontroller or the
  breakout board. But it’s definitely something that is getting
  completely overlooked, and along with LadyAda, Freeduino, and others,
  we hope to continue to encourage this sort of DIY approach to the
  prototyping process.

  Rate this:
   
• 

  Yury Gitman 3:28 pm on April 17, 2009 Permalink | Reply  

  blog postings 

  

  Link: Owl Night Light instructable

  InstructJS.load(["helpbubble"], function () {
  new HelpBubble({
  clickEl : $("NewCommentLINK_top").down("a"),
  width: 200,
  contents : makeHelpBubbleTextForComments("comments"),
  additionalActions: focusOnHelpBubbleLogin
  });
  });

  Apr 15, 2009. 7:03 AMjessyratfink says: What a cute idea! Much better than Gloworms!

   

  Rate this: