A fantastic project by the tinker.it (Arduino) team, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in getting into electronics, using Arduino or just wants to build a synth. All code, designs and schematics are open under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License. All files (designs, code et cetera) I used/made can be downloaded below.

A friend showed me his Auduino, and I needed to build one too! I decided to make a few modifications to the original. I added a switch that enables a light dependent resistor (LDR) to control the rate of the noise, which essentially means the more light that hits the resistor, the faster the tempo. When the switch is on, it disables the associated potentiometer and enables the LDR. It’s a fun addition and you get the chance to put your whole body (or just hand) into the synth.

I also did not want to commit to one mapping of the Auduino — I liked both the the smooth frequency and the stepped pentatonic mapping, so I added a switch to move between the two synthesiser parameters.

Section of edited code:

if (digitalRead(SWITCH)) {
// Smooth frequency mapping
//syncPhaseInc = mapPhaseInc(analogRead(SYNC_CONTROL)) / 4;

// Stepped pentatonic mapping: D, E, G, A, B
syncPhaseInc = mapPentatonic(analogRead(SYNC_CONTROL));
}

This is the schematic for the way I wired my Auduino. I used Fritzing software, which is also a great beginner tool for prototyping your circuit board. Fritzing is a neat open source project, I recommend checking them out.

Lastly, I needed to design an enclosure, which was also a first. Inspired by enclosure extraordinaire, Xander (see his work at machinecollective.org), I designed a simple yet functional enclosure in Illustrator and cut it using a laser cutter. After two failed enclosures, the third one fit! I initially wanted to have it enclosed in black satin acrylic, but I ended up with a transparent enclosure so I could see the components. In retrospect, I should have stuck with the black as the transparency detracts from the minimilist aesthetic I sought. I have attached my designs here — feel free to use/modify (CC license).

How does it work?

Tinker.it explains: “Sound is generated by playing the same noise (‘grain’) repeatedly at very high speed. This merges into a tone that is an audible hybrid of the repetition rate and the original grain. It sounds quite similar to an oscillator with two resonating bandpass filters, although the different architecture means there are lots of additional interesting noises at parameter extremes. The grain consists of two triangular waves of adjustable frequency, and adjustable decay rate. This is based on FOF synthesis model, but using triangle waves instead of sine and using a rectangular window. The repetition rate is set by another control.”

Build one too! After spending the last few months at the CabFabLab, I have been become enamored by physical computing, and I have been reading makezine fairly religiously now. If you are just getting into this world, like me, it is a fun blog to read.

Resources:
- The Google group that details the project here.
- My minor edit to the code can be found here.
- My illustrator designs can be found here.
- My Fritzing file (schematic details) can be found here.

The lines are where I moved my mouse and the black circles are pointer stops (not clicks). You can run this little app and see what you can create by downloading it from Zenkov: Mac or PC. How does yours look?

A bold statement of this sort is easy to dismiss – technological fads are thrown at us regularly, where the-next-big-thing announcements are just as frequent as their dismissals. Nonetheless, Gershenfeld identifies several compelling parallels. As the story of personal fabrication unfolds, its resemblance to the personal computing revolution is remarkable. Computers were bulky, big and expensive – not to be seen in the home, but they found their way in and became the center of our lives. Many, along with Gershenfeld, are arguing this will happen with bulky, big and expensive manufacturing equipment. Yes, we are talking about a Star Trek Replicator thingy on our desks.

[Hackerspace. Image from Alex Welsh of Wall Street Journal]

Let’s zoom out and position ourselves in the (re)new(ed) cultural trend of DIY (do-it-yourself). Justin Lahart in “Tinkering Makes Comeback Amid Crisis” gives an interesting overview of the reemerging DIY culture that has been the cornerstone of innovation. From the shift of garage tinkerers to successful entrepreneurs, there is something big happening — people are reclaiming their physical world and shaping it to fit their lives. Realizing that creativity is essential in ones success, many are finding this through the personalization of their world.

While Hackerspaces have recently been covered in the media, I want to focus on FabLabs which have been exponentially growing since 2005. I am discovering the incredible potential for FabLabs as I am starting to get my feet wet in a local lab. I have been blow away by the personal creative empowerment, the larger social meaning of such a movement and the contagious momentum it has.

[RepRap Workshop at FabLab. Image from XNDR, CabFabLab]

A few weeks ago, I finished Neil Gershenfeld’s book, Fab, which tells the detailed story of all fab-related things. Although it is from 2005 and much has changed, it is still an informative and worthwhile read. Gershenfeld argues how FabLabs and ultimately DIY culture are the future.

So, what is a FabLab?

A FabLab is an open workshop that contains a variety of modern prototyping machinery that can be used to create essentially anything. The FabLab program was devised by MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld. His course “How to create (almost) anything” was the impetus for FabLabs, which have now developed into a global network of (somewhat) standardized and largely open-source setups. From the South Bronx to Afghanistan to the Netherlands, Norway and India — Fablabs around the world are serving the needs and demands of local economies. While some lab users are dreaming up jewelry and art installations, others are creating food safety monitoring systems, wireless networks and RFID animal tags.

The movement is a disruptive technology that reclaims customization and pushes bulk production out the door. In Gershenfelds book, he brings up the concept of globalization being replaced by localization, whereby mass customization losses the “mass” piece. He argues that technology will start better reflecting our needs because it is going to be developed by and for us. We are heading toward a highly malleable physical world.

It is pretty incredible, but what does this all mean?

Gershenfeld states, “If you give people access to means to solve their own problems, it touches something very, very deep…somehow it goes back to nest-building, or mastering your own environment. There’s sort of this deep thing inside that most people don’t express that comes tumbling out when they get access to these tools.” The access to FabLabs is drawing attention from artists, entrepreneurs and engineers alike, and is at the root of this rapidly growing revolution — one where manufacturing and DIY are empowering communities. I have seen this first hand. Similar to a child getting her hands on a Lego kit and exploring what she can build, people are being given a chance to expand their creative potential.

The funny thing is that this future trend is moving towards the way things used to be. People were inventing, building and tinkering since the dawn of man. If you needed a tool or something for your house, you built it. Or went to your friend and got advice on how to build or acquire such a thing. But industrialization hit society and mass production took over. We became consumers rather than producers. But, we have reached the other side of that hump. Production is coming back to the garage. Well not only the garage, but also peoples desks, offices and schools. Society is being re-equipped with the tools and communities are leveraging the potential of these powerful technologies.

But, what is going to happen in just a few more years when the market continues to drive down the price and the ability of these machines continues to rapidly increase. (And off course what good is a technology blog with out mentioning Moore’s Law).

What do you think?

If you are interested in this topic, I highly recommend watching Neil Gershenfeld’s Ted Talk. This is a great little video showing the diverse and global FabLab community. Check it out. Lastly, The CabFabLab has an excellent photo stream of all FabLab related projects. These images offer a really good insight at what is possible. Check it out here.

As Tech Crunch notes ” Without a decent amount of usable layers, none of these AR browsers are going to see mainstream adoption any time soon, and Layar is the first to attempt luring third-party developers into creating layers on top of their system by means of an extensive API.”

This is a great step for AR — as the race to develop the best platform with maximum content while also supporting an array of devices. We are going to see some create stuff come out of this API opening.

The official Google Blog writes:

“Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010….

…Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.”

The OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips, and Google is working with a number of OEMs to introduce netbooks to the market next year! The architecture is going to be based on a Linux kernel.

I can’t wait to see this!

The first interesting one was a collaborative polling company called urtak, which offers different categories of user generated polling topics. From their website: “The goal of the Urtak project is to find an answer to the question “What do men and women live by?” Since no single person has the knowledge to answer this question, we propose that we must work together, pooling our knowledge and insight to learn what we all care about, what unites us, and what makes us different from each other.” It seems like an interesting company, however, what compels those people to answer the polls. This is a good idea that is lacking a sticky component.

Vocab Sushi was another interesting concept. The free service offers “bite size” vocabulary words and sources them from thousands of news and media outlets daily. The vocab words are offered in contextual examples and one can play “never ending” games with those words. The company was founded by Jeff Novich and the website notes: “VocabSushi provides thousands of sentences that demonstrate any vocab word’s contemporary usage in news articles. Compared to the brute force method of flashcard definitions, a deeper understanding of the word can be attained simply by reading several interesting sentences that contain that word.” It is an interesting replacement for flashcards, and I believe this will catch on. I would have loved to use this years ago when I was studying for the SATs. Although I subscribe to Anu Garg’s Word.A.Day, I can nonetheless see myself using this service once in a while.

Sponge Cell presented a new form of flash based interactive banner advertising. The company is using social networking tools built into ad banners to help push content directly from banners as opposed to relying on clicking through the banner and arriving at a new website. The company writes: “The best advertising gives its audience information that they want to hold onto and share. Sponge Cell lets people do just that, by pushing advertising onto calendars, social profiles, mobile devices, home pages and other permanent places, without disrupting their browsing experience.” The company is attempting to mitigate a persons aversion to clicking a banner and being steered away from their chosen website. Sponge Cell’s banner’s allow for brand interaction directly on the banner. Another interesting idea, but once again, what compels me to interact with a banner which has an added social media component? Sponge Cell did discuss their advertising algorithm (patent pending) which bases the ad not on the search key word but on the aggregated data that the search terms yields. I thought this was already built into Google’s algorithm, but go figure.

The most interesting application was Zagat’s Augmented Reality Application called NRU.

The application allows you to find restaurants, nightspots, and shops “near you.” As you rotate your mobile device (360 degrees), the location of the restaurants appear relative to you. It also syncs with Zagat’s detailed reports on the restaurants. Although Zagat reviews are not user generated and have a top-down approach, the service is still fairly compelling as a closed source offering of reviews opposed to Urban Spoon. Check out a video demo of the product here:

The product is only offered on the Android as of now, but with the release of the magnetometer on the iPhone — we should see this application at the app store shortly (as long as Apple opens up the channels for AR production on the iPhone). This is a cool app and just the beginning of compelling AR apps to reach the market.

NYTM also invited two guest speakers: Iranian technologist, Ali Amami, who discussed the recent Iranian election, consequential revolt and the role of social media. This was the 10th election in Iran after the Islamic revolution and is the first election since then to see the levels of protest. Ali Amami stated that this was a new school revolution as a result of social media. He said that cell phones were used as capturing devices, where citizens became independent news outlets. Facebook was used as a community organization tool and YouTube was a video distribution channel that major media outlets, like CNN, turned towards. The question, however, was what went wrong? Well, first off, Nokia sold wiretapping equipment to Iran’s Telecom giant (source: Wall Street Journal). Also, Iran’s internet is state owned and they intercepted and filtered content with the ultimate suspension of internet service across the country.

Amami’s message to NYTM was that as technologists, we need to think about ways to work towards solving the issues of wiretapping/filtration, interception and suspension of the world wide web. He urged companies like Google and Yahoo to not bow to fascist government requests.

And the evening ended with Douglas Rushkoff discussing his new book, Life inc., about an open source economy.

It is always a pleasure to hear Rushkoff speak — he is intelligent, charismatic and extremely articulate. Speaking to the NYTM crowd, Rushkoff offered the analogy that our economic system is like a closed source operating system, though we behave as if our role in the economy was somehow organic. He argues that although there are natural elements and emergent properties of our system, our currency and economic affairs hold a bias to corporations (which are anti-competitive) and a centralized currency (which seeks to create value from top down) — the opposite of an open source economy, which was most closely realized in the late Middle Ages. During the late Middle Ages, there was tremendous spending and abundance, where with local currency people invested and reinvested from the bottom-up — wealth was distributed to people who created value. Those who did not create value, did not make money. The aristocracy, seeing the uprising of the middle class and that wealth was no longer controlled by the centralized authority — made local currency illegal. This type of approach extends to today’s times. Rushkoff offers the solution (to the NYTM crowd) of an open source economy which is being facilitated by the internet and low start-up capital. As our economy is at a downfall, he is urging us to take advantage of the situation and create value through the net.

It was an interesting evening at NYTM, and I look forward to the next meet up! NYTM also showcased the 3 finalists of their t-shirts competition (you can vote here.)

As TurtleThink has written about countless times now, augmented reality is the future, and we all want that future to be a little more tangible. Help us Apple! With the release of the compass on the iPhone 3G[S], we are at the brink of some incredible consumer AR applications (as seen in the videos below). So, let’s spread the word. I am reposting the letter and some neat AR videos from Games Alfresco below.

A letter sent to Apple Developer Relations.

Dear Apple,

Signed:
Michael Gervautz – Managing Director Imagination GesmbH
Robert Rice – CEO Neogence
Georg Klein – PhD PTAM creator from Oxford University
Stephane Cocquereaumont – President & Lead Developer Int13 (Kweekies)
Maarten Lens-FitzGerald – Founder & Partner SPRXmobile, developer of Layar
Ori Inbar – Author of GamesAlfresco.com and CEO and founder Pookatak Games
Philippe Breuss – Lead developer, Mobilizy
Philip R. Lamb – CTO, Artoolworks
Noora Guldemond – Metaio
Takahito Iguchi – CEO, Tonchidot
Blair MacIntyre – Associate Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology
Bruno Uzzan – CEO, Total Immersion
Michael Zoellner – Fraunhofer IGD
Andrea Carignano – CEO, Seac02

[via Games Alfresco]

Their most recent game is called Mightier and according to the website “is an independent puzzle action game developed by Lucas Pope and Keiko Ishizaka. Play as the Engineer and the Actionaut to solve puzzles and collect items in each sector.”

The puzzle is fully interactive, where you first physically solve the puzzle by drawing out 2D components on a piece of paper. Once you’ve solved that portion, your webcam scans that piece of paper and your drawing is converted into a 3D puzzle. You then draw your own characters, scan those and play on your 2d converted to 3d turf. It is quite innovative.

Check out how it works below:

[via Interface Design and Usability Blog]

I am a bit surprised by this statistic, but it does reveal the underlying popularity of virtual worlds, which are only on the rise. “Massively points out that the virtual world [Second Life] is also topping out over popular social networks like Facebook and Myspace.” Also noting that “This data is measured from actual homes…Almost 200,000 of them, so it isn’t just data that’s centric to the hardcore gamer. This is a random sampling of ordinary people.” Here is a summary of their analysis:

YouTube: 47 minutes per week (via Cnet)
Facebook: 84 minutes per week (via Cnet)
Myspace: 10.5 minutes per week (via ITProPortal)
Second LIfe: 760 minutes per week (via Nielsen)

These numbers are pretty shocking and show both the popularity and robustness of virtual worlds. Where will they take us? Who knows, but we still need a lot of work on the infrastructure of virtual worlds before they become as ubiquitous as social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

[Via Virtual World News and Massively]

3Di, Inc., a Tokyo-based company has released the first commercially available OpenSim viewer which allows users to engage with 3D virtual worlds using a web browser. Furthermore, you can use it with a touch screen. Check out the demo:

No more client downloads? Hopefully! This is a pretty big step with virtual world technology because more and more people don’t want to bother with downloading a viewer. We are living in a time of cloud computing, and we want everything to be (securely) in the cloud. Web browser support is a small step in continuing to propel this industry forward.