Random experiments, circuits, code, rapid prototyping, sometimes things to buy, and the odd tune by Tod Kurt.
Over at HackingRoomba.com, I did a quick review of the iRobot Create, iRobot’s robotics hacking-oriented robot that is basically a Roomba in disguise.
Short version: All the Roomba hacks here work on the Create, and the Create offers several advantages to the serious robotics experimenter. However, it’s not as cost-effective if you’re on a budget.
Come see many of the Roomba hacks from the HackingRoomba.com site and book! Roombas will be singing, dancing, making art and generally making a nuisance of themselves.
Maker Faire is “a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates arts, crafts, engineering, science projects and the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. It’s for creative, resourceful folks who like to tinker and love to make things. We call them Makers.”
It’ll be a lot of fun, come join us!
Where: Maker Faire, San Mateo Fairgrounds.
When: May 19 & 20
LEDs should be smarter. Sure we have flashing LED assemblies and even rudimentary RGB-flashing discrete LEDs. But LEDs themselves are predominately just dumb lights. There’s no real reason for this. Fab processes for microcontrollers and LEDs aren’t that dissimilar. It should be possible to have both in a single LED-like package.
There is a glimmer of this happening, like the “RGB LED Slow Colour Change” LEDs you can get. You can see an example of these being used on the Embarrasingly Easy CaseMod. Unfortunately you can’t change the cycle time or anything else of how these LEDs work. So let’s make our own. These prototype Smart LEDs will necessarily be larger than a production run, but the size is getting close, giving us a feeling for how we might use them.
In my periodic perusal of Warren Ellis’s blog, I see he’s linked to Nicolas Nova’s post about “The Ubiquitous Computing of Today”. Nicolas discusses a great LIFT07 paper, “Yesterday’s tomorrows: notes on ubiquitous computing’s dominant vision” by Genevieve Bell and Paul Dourish (Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2006). He and the paper highlight a persistent problem with ubicomp research: the ever-receding horizon of technology.
It’s a truism that the technology we need is “just around the corner”. This “proximal future” described in the paper is comforting because it means we don’t have to focus on the actual implementation issues. Just wait for Moore’s Law and everything’ll be alright. But this is a cop-out. I’ve been guilty of thinking this way and it bugs me. I don’t want promises of a future ubicomp world, I want that world right now.
At ThingM we’re focussing on what’s just possible. A tagline of ours is only half-jokingly “ThingM brings you one minute (+/- 20 seconds) from THE FUTURE!” We’re not about the Ubicomp of Tomorrow but rather the Ubicomp After The Next Commercial Break. Our two most recent technology sketches, LoveM and WineM can be built with today’s technology at a cost of 10x over the equivalent dumb version.
An order of magnitude cost increase for a smart version of a dumb object may seem like a lot, but isn’t when put in the context of product variations. Our most pervasive computing device, the cell phone, already exhibits over a factor of ten in price variation, from the $20 unlocked Nokias from yesteryear on Ebay to the tony $700 Sony Ericcson P990
The markets most allied with ubicomp, electronic gadgets, exhibit enormous price sensitivity, expanding upward in features and price from a minimally-priced base. Most of us buy in the middle to try to hit the sweet spot of the most features with the highest economy of scale. Those of us with special requirements or desires aim at the high-end. This is one reason, as Gibson puts it, the future is already here, just unevenly distributed.
As technology suffuses more into everyday objects, those objects will exhibit the same price elasticity of gadgets. Many domestic objects already do because of luxury and designer brands. The difference in comfort between a no-name leather easy chair from Target and an Eames lounger from Design Within Reach does not track the 10x difference in cost. The cost of adding intelligence to the DWR chair is the same as the sales tax on it. The objects at the high end of the price scale are the ones likely to first incorporate ubicomp technology, making them a better value compared to their non-intelligent siblings. As economies of scale kick in, these new features will become cost-effective for the entire price range.
Exploring what will be possible in a decade’s time is a useful and inspiring task. But until we have nanoassemblers, if we want to impact the lives of people today, we must discover and utilize the technologies available today that are on the verge of having high economies of scale.
Another technology sketch from my company ThingM. This time it’s Valentine’s Day-themed, with LoveM, a heart-shaped box of “memory chocolates”.
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. ;-)
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.
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 cellar) can use it to search through collections, track the location of specific bottles and manage inventory with a minimum of data entry. Linking bottles to networked databases can provide information that would otherwise be too time consuming or difficult to obtain (for example, the total value of a collection, or all the wine that is ready to drink).
The Roomba family was out caroling. They stopped by and sang a few songs. I caught a few on tape. I think they were a little tipsy on mulled 30W or something.
This was a demo of RoombaMidi2, a Mac OS X program to turn your Roomba into a MIDI instrument. Click the link to find out how and get the source code (and find out why they were so drunk).
Happy Holidays from HackingRoomba.com