Schematic Overview of GUI

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Home-cooked RGB-LED Shields

Here’s something I whipped up Friday: a tasty duo of home-cooked, hand soldered RGB-LED shields. They fit onto the Freakduino boards but also Arduino and can produce light in all colors. The shields will be covered by a semitransparent material so the light output will be even.

Not the most complicated circuit 🙂 but I needed them to replace state of the art LCD screen shields, that unfortunately used pins that the board also used. Fingers crossed it will work this time.

If you want to make this yourself, here is some info on the circuit.

Slow Shutter Cam

Today I found this great app: Slow Shutter Cam for iPhone. What I like is that although the functionality is quite simple (you can adjust the shutter time), it has positive reviews and people are also using it for light painting.

Good to see that apparently there is a need for this kind of app!

A LightScribe Story

Imagine you are a 15-year-old boy and bored to no end. Finally, the school bell rings and you are done for the day. Usually, you would hang out in the nearby park with friends, doing nothing really. But ever since some of your friends introduced you to it, you are often using the LightScribe app, like today. When you see your friends, you all whip out your smartphones and start the app. The app sees all available LightScribers in a nearby radius, so you can easily select your friends’ group from the list. With some laughs and jokes, the best location is picked. Perhaps when it gets darker outside, you will move to the park, but for now, the decision falls to the bike shed.

The app picks one random cell to be the ‘photographer’. The other participating smartphones are designated ‘light sources’. You are picked to be one of the light sources, and the screen of your cell

Arduino Code Setup

This is a first draft of the structure of the code for my project. ‘Void’ and ‘Loop’ are places in the code, so I know what to put them under once I start writing.

The blue bits are different interactions I could write. The first is that when the light sources move closer together, they take on light properties from each other. This would hopefully encourage users to move around more, thereby increasing the exercise effect. Also it makes the interaction more interesting the more players you play it with.

Other interactions could take place at the same time or instead of this one, perhaps I can come up with some more!

Interaction Schematic

This is an app for smartphones that enables Light Scribing at entry-level. The app encourages sharing and working together with friends and could lead to a feeling of competence in users while using it. Here is how it works schematically:

By ‘Frankenstein’ prototype, I mean that I will assemble existing devices to mimic the functionality of my application. For example, instead of trying to hack a cellphone or tablet to be able to modify its camera, I use a normal digital camera with an Eye-Fi memory card, that sends the image instantly and wirelessly to an iPad.

Answer Your Research Question: a Hypothesis

Q: Why would teenagers want to do Light Scribing?

A: Light Scribing can make teenagers feel competent and connected to their friends.

After meeting with Rob Tieben today, I discovered there is still something missing here. Light Scribing does not in itself give the feeling of competency or connectedness. That this came out of my research is because from the start, I went with the assumption that the Light Scribing would be done within a social network setting. So the real answer could be:

A: Light Scribing within a social system can make teenagers feel competent and connected to their friends.

Better?

*off thinking about it some more*

A Long List of Ideas that May or May Not Have Anything to do with Light Scribing and May or May Not Exist Already

1. Fire making model- hard work at first, but then easy to share
2. Holographic film inside real world
3. Group knitting
4. Dome of light- personal space
5. Capture cityscape light/ traffic in pictures
6. Trail follower games
7. Lightscribe app: making and sharing pictures
8. Crayon graffiti
9. Lightscribe photography competition
10. Recipe email chain letter

The Shape of Sharing

After Dr. Tilde Bekker’s example, I started work on my own ‘web of parameters’. At first it was quite messy, but after some rounds of pressure, a neat little five-sided diamond emerged.

A Recap of Two User Evaluation Sessions

Finally, it’s here! A condensed video showing the most interesting outcomes of two User Evaluation sessions about the Light Scribing concept.