todbot blog » sketching

Sketching08 talk: Good Hardware APIs et al

todbot — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 02:11:13 +0000

The Sketching in Hardware ’08 conference was held at RISD in Providence, Rhode Island this year. Both RISD and Providence were very welcoming and I think we had a lot of fun. Once again, Mike pulls off an awesome conference.

For my talk, since I didn’t have one big thing I’ve been working on this last year, I decided to shotgun blast a bunch of different topics out there, arranged roughly on the topics: - Good Hardware APIs – about the evolution of BlinkM’s layout, - USB not on Rails – an update to a previous Sketching talk of mine, [...]

In Processing, size() matters for Serial ports

todbot — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 04:20:45 +0000

Mark Allen of Machine Project is teaching an Arduino course using some of the notes from my Bionic Arduino class. He and his students were seeing in Windows XP & 2000, when trying to getting Processing to talk to Arduino, the cryptic error: gnu.io.PortInUseException: Unknown Application at gnu.io.CommPortIdentifier.open(CommPortIdentifier.java:354)

Both his class and Mark and I separately spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the problem was. Eventually we discovered that it’s because the sketch I had written had a setup() [...]

Things at ThingM, my Berkeley INFO290-13 talk

todbot — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 21:03:48 +0000

On Nov 8th I was a guest lecturer at the “Theory and Practice of Tangible User Interfaces” class at UC Berkeley. It’s a physical computing course, about “a new approach to HCI which focuses on the physical interaction with computational media.” The class has both lecture and lab components. The lab section is hands-on experimenting with novel physical interfaces, using Arduino as the core. So of course I have a great fondness for the course.

The talk itself was a sort of summary of the things we’ve been pondering at ThingM. If you’re already familiar with the [...]

LoveM Memory Chocolates technology sketch

todbot — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 00:14:36 +0000

Another technology sketch from my company ThingM. This time it’s Valentine’s Day-themed, with LoveM, a heart-shaped box of “memory chocolates”.

(revver link)

Abstract: LoveM is a Technology Sketch of an augmented box of chocolates that displays personal memories on an LCD screen as chocolates are removed from the box. It attempts to evoke joy and surprise through the use of available, inexpensive technology embedded into a familiar object. It investigates what happens when we put technology in a non-utilitarian, non-game context and explores the ideas of introducing personal, intimate content into an otherwise mass-produced product.

It’s also our Valentine’s Day present to you. [...]

WineM, a ThingM technology sketch

todbot — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 02:44:27 +0000

At my new company ThingM, Mike and I have completed a technology sketch for WineM, a smart wine rack. Below is a video demonstration and an abstract. A full description can be found on the ThingM site. We periodically create Technology Sketches as a way to explore the ideas we’re thinking about.

(revver link)

Abstract: WineM is a Technology Sketch of a smart wine rack. It’s designed to locate wines in a wine rack using RFIDs attached to bottles and to display which wines have been located using LED backlights behind the bottles. Collectors (or anyone with a large wine [...]

Sketching in Hardware: USB on Rails

todbot — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 04:58:17 +0000

I gave a talk at the Sketching in Hardware 1 conference. It was a great conference, full of amazing people and hosted at an astounding location. I’ll write more on the conference later.

My talk was “USB on Rails”. The USB HID standard enables the sending and receiving of arbitrary data-structures (“objects”) between a host PC and a device. All without any additional device drivers, since the HID driver is built in to all OSs. Many sketching tools or demos use USB, but introducing them to the unintiated means lots of reboots for driver installs. The [...]