Tomorrow there is the opening of Zennestraat 17 Rue de la Senne, and I was asked to show a bit of Softwearables in one of the Constant rooms in the building. I decided to work on the project I presented at The Ever Mass land in July – and to add sound to it plus to make it standalone – without a computer. The excercise is presented in a workroom, ready for soldering, coding and reading.
From the moment I started the project Softwearables, the ideas I worked with have to do with proximity, social conventions.
How do you greet a person, how strong/soft/close should a handshake be? This chapter of Softwearables is about the invisible zones you have around you (of course, all of this in a European context – I’m fully aware of that!). When you talk to someone, you are inclined to stand at a certain distance from them. Being too close is only permitted when you know someone very well. Standing too far will influence your communication. In a tram, festival, crowded area, this notion of zone gets scrambled. In a packed metro you are like tuna in a can – yet you do kind of try to keep your personal space in a certain way. In a city your personal space has different proportions than in a large field – logical – and you deal with it differently.
With these personal observations/ideas in mind I started working on a wearable in two forms: “Do stand so close to me” & “Don’t stand so close to me”. Because sometimes you want proximity and sometimes it is very important to have your personal space. You can chose what version to wear. I determined 4 zones – these are open for discussion and they are easy to change in the Arduino code-
– very close: less than 30 cm
– close: between 30 and 70 cm
– futher: between 70 and 2 m
– far: 2m and beyond
If you are in a specific perimeter of the wearable, a certain led will light up – and some distances will be heard through the speaker, enabling you to really feel these invisible boundaries. The visitor can decide to interact with some – and really see how close is still comfortable and when is it beyond.
In the periphery of this physical space, I did think about virtual proximity as well: on certain social platforms, the term “friend” is thrown about like a piece of confetti during carnival. What if you want to accept someone as a stranger, or an acquaintance? Can you be so explicit in tagging someone as a non-friend? There is a possibility that part 3 will go more in this direction.
Technical specifications: A Sonar with Arduino detects the physical proximity of someone, which triggers four leds in a certain perimeter (very close, close, further and far). Voice(s) – Waveshield on top of the Arduino – tell you at certain distances how many centimeters there is in between you and the person (mostly a mannequin) measuring. The public can wear the detection “sheet”, but often people are not inclined to do this…
In order to get this set-up working, you need to programme the Arduino, flash some code onto it’s little chip through usb, in order for it to translate the signal it gets from the Sonar, which converts this into signals for the leds (into light) and into pulses which start a sound.
Here I publish the code in order to make this set-up work. It is not the cleanest code in the world – but it was made through cooperation. The first part of the code – to make the leds work – I got a massive amount of help from Johannes Taelman (through the code31 malinglist – and some conversational proprietary software). The second part, making the sound work with the Waveshield could not have been possible without the excellent tutorials from Limor Fried aka Ladyada. She develops the waveshield (physical object) + explains on how to work with them, providing code examples and forum support. The Forum helped me debug some of my code, but in the end I had to get “live” help – from two Pieters @ Hackerspace Brussels. Hereby thanks to everyone, including Kurt from Timelab where I could do the vinylcut iron-able letters.
//Final Frankenscript code from a Waveshield working with 4 leds and a Sonar
#define RLED1 14 //testled on the duino
#define RLED2 15 //testled on the duino
#define RLED3 16 //testled on the duino
#define RLED4 17 //testled on the duino
#include
#include
#include “util.h”
#include “wave.h”
#define one “01.WAV”
#define two “02.WAV”
#define three “03.WAV”
#define four “04.WAV”
#define five “05.WAV”
#define six “06.WAV”
#define seven “07.WAV”
#define eight “08.WAV”
#define nine “09.WAV”
#define nine “10.WAV”
#define redled 9
AF_Wave card;
File f;
boolean file_is_open=false; // kan twee waarden hebben, false of true
Wavefile wave; // only one!
int wasplaying = 0;
int rVal;
int pingPin = 7;
void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);
Serial.println(“Wave test!”);
pinMode(RLED1, OUTPUT);
pinMode(RLED2, OUTPUT);
pinMode(RLED3, OUTPUT);
pinMode(RLED4, OUTPUT);
pinMode(2, OUTPUT);
pinMode(3, OUTPUT);
pinMode(4, OUTPUT);
pinMode(5, OUTPUT);
pinMode(redled, OUTPUT);
if (!card.init_card()) {
putstring_nl(“Card init. failed!”); return;
}
if (!card.open_partition()) {
putstring_nl(“No partition!”); return;
}
if (!card.open_filesys()) {
putstring_nl(“Couldn’t open filesys”); return;
}
if (!card.open_rootdir()) {
putstring_nl(“Couldn’t open dir”); return;
}
putstring_nl(“Files found:”);
ls();
}
void loop()
{
long duration, inches, cm;
// The PING))) is triggered by a HIGH pulse of 2 or more microseconds.
// We give a short LOW pulse beforehand to ensure a clean HIGH pulse.
pinMode(pingPin, OUTPUT);
digitalWrite(pingPin, LOW);
delayMicroseconds(2);
digitalWrite(pingPin, HIGH);
delayMicroseconds(5);
digitalWrite(pingPin, LOW);
// The same pin is used to read the signal from the PING))): a HIGH
// pulse whose duration is the time (in microseconds) from the sending
// of the ping to the reception of its echo off of an object.
pinMode(pingPin, INPUT);
duration = pulseIn(pingPin, HIGH);
// convert the time into a distance
inches = microsecondsToInches(duration);
cm = microsecondsToCentimeters(duration);
Serial.print(cm);
Serial.print(“cm “);
Serial.println();
if (cm<25) {
digitalWrite(RLED1, LOW);
digitalWrite(RLED2, LOW);
digitalWrite(RLED3, LOW);
digitalWrite(RLED4, HIGH);
}
else if ((cm>26) && (cm<90)) {
digitalWrite(RLED1, LOW);
digitalWrite(RLED2, LOW);
digitalWrite(RLED3, HIGH);
digitalWrite(RLED4, LOW);
}
else if ((cm>91) && (cm<200)) {
digitalWrite(RLED1, LOW);
digitalWrite(RLED2, HIGH);
digitalWrite(RLED3, LOW);
digitalWrite(RLED4, LOW);
}
else if ((cm>201) && (cm<300)) {
digitalWrite(RLED1, HIGH);
digitalWrite(RLED2, LOW);
digitalWrite(RLED3, LOW);
digitalWrite(RLED4, LOW);
}
if ((cm>2) && (cm<4)) {
if (!wave.isplaying) {
playfile(one);
}
}
if ((cm>4) && (cm<6)) {
if (!wave.isplaying) {
playfile(two);
}
}
if ((cm>19) && (cm<21)) {
if (!wave.isplaying) {
playfile(three);
}
}
if ((cm>28) && (cm<32)) {
if (!wave.isplaying) {
playfile(four);
}
}
if ((cm>47) && (cm<52)) {
if (!wave.isplaying) {
playfile(five);
}
}
if ((cm>66) && (cm<73)) {
if (!wave.isplaying) {
playfile(six);
}
}
if ((cm>96) && (cm<105)) {
if (!wave.isplaying) {
playfile(seven);
}
}
if ((cm>196) && (cm<205)) {
if (!wave.isplaying) {
playfile(eight);
}
}
if ((cm>246) && (cm<255)) {
if (!wave.isplaying) {
playfile(nine);
}
}
if ((cm>295) && (cm<306)) {
if (!wave.isplaying) {
playfile(six);
}
}
delay(100);
}
long microsecondsToInches(long microseconds)
{
// According to Parallax’s datasheet for the PING))), there are
// 73.746 microseconds per inch (i.e. sound travels at 1130 feet per
// second). This gives the distance travelled by the ping, outbound
// and return, so we divide by 2 to get the distance of the obstacle.
// See: http://www.parallax.com/dl/docs/prod/acc/28015-PING-v1.3.pdf
return microseconds / 74 / 2;
}
long microsecondsToCentimeters(long microseconds)
{
// The speed of sound is 340 m/s or 29 microseconds per centimeter.
// The ping travels out and back, so to find the distance of the
// object we take half of the distance travelled.
return microseconds / 29 / 2;
}
void ls() {
char name[13];
card.reset_dir();
putstring_nl(“Files found:”);
while (1) {
if (!card.get_next_name_in_dir(name)) {
card.reset_dir();
return;
}
Serial.println(name);
}
}
void playfile(char *name) {
if (wave.isplaying) {// already playing something, so stop it!
wave.stop(); // stop it
}
if (file_is_open) {
card.close_file(f);
file_is_open = false;
}
f = card.open_file(name);
file_is_open = true;
if (!f) {
putstring_nl(“Couldn’t open file”); return;
}
if (!wave.create(f)) {
putstring_nl(“Not a valid WAV”); return;
}
// ok time to play!
wave.play();
}
This project was made with free software (Arduino, Processing – in an earlier stage – , Ardour, Jack, Sox) and is under a Free Art License. Softwearables – do(n’t) stand so close to me part 2 – is a moment in my research on physical computing, wearables and sound.
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