TerraLine · posted by vaibhav bhawsar 137 days ago
TerraLine
The TerraLine instrument re-appropriates the magnetic compass to show directions that are not cardinal but indicators of economic states. It is an instrument that helps one navigate Earth using such directions.Navigating or orienting ourselves in such ways could offer opportunities of envisioning and exploring our world from different perspectives.
More information in slides below:
About the thesis · posted by vaibhav bhawsar 251 days ago
Area of enquiry
Re-appropriating the magnetic compass to show directions that are not cardinal but indicators of emotional, economic states. Creating new kinds of directions that a device could help you point to and explore.
Why do we need such a device
Most navigation devices in the past (compass,sextant) opened a new territory which one could move towards, explore and discover. When the compass points north it points towards a direction and not ‘a location’ or point. But in contemporary navigation devices, such as the GPS ,an absolute co-ordinate system, like ones latitude and longitude on a imaginary grid is given utmost importance. The GPS is extremely efficient and in this efficiency we loose a lot of richness of contexts due to the absence of the act of exploration. When we use a GPS, often its about getting from point A to B. While when we use a compass its still about getting from A to B but the journey in between those points is also important.
In brief I am interested in pointing devices that are fuzzy, vague and tacit and not in devices that are exact, precise or ingrained in a grid of x and y coordinates.
Practices and Inspirations
The Compass itself
GPS Table – Fiona Raby and Anthony Dunne
Practices of the Situationists
the boomerang (yes the aboriginal one)
The Listening Post – Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen
Texts
Else/Where Mapping – Peter Hall and Janet Abrams
Field Guide to Getting Lost – Rebecca Solnit
Power of maps – Dennis Wood
Alison Sant – Redefining the basemap
Beyond Locative Media by Marc Tuters and Kazys Varnelis
Personal Project Reference · posted by vaibhav bhawsar 251 days ago
The Lowlands Project
This investigation involved mapping my neighborhood communities, professions and individuals with the aim of eliciting hidden urban territories and behaviors. This was my undergrad thesis. For more see the link below.
Project Details
HMC6352 Sparkfun Compass Module and Arduino · posted by vaibhav bhawsar 449 days ago
Ok so I struggled a bit to get this to work so it makes sense to post it here in case you are having a similar problem getting HMC6352 compass module to work with Arduino. The code below is not mine- I got it from Sparkfun’s forums
Using Arduino NG rev C board and Arduino IDE v.0008. It didn’t work when I compiled and uploaded the code with v.0007. So don’t use it. SDL and SCL lines don’t have any pullup resistors in my setup. Probably because v.0008 enables the pullup resistors on ATmega168.
From v.0008 UPDATES file
Activating TWI/I2C pullup resistors on the ATmega168 (in addition to the ATmega8).
NOTES
*Using Arduino NG rev C board and Arduino IDE v.0008
*SDA to Analog pin 4 and SCL to analog pin 5
*No pullup resistors on SDA and SCL
*Using 3v instead of 5v to the Vcc of the compass module.
CODE:
#include <Wire.h>
int HMC6352Address = 0x42;
// This is calculated in the setup() function
int slaveAddress;
int ledPin = 13;
boolean ledState = false;
byte headingData[2];
int i, headingValue;
void setup()
{
// Shift the device's documented slave address (0x42) 1 bit right
// This compensates for how the TWI library only wants the
// 7 most significant bits (with the high bit padded with 0)
slaveAddress = HMC6352Address >> 1; // This results in 0x21 as the address to pass to TWI
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT); // Set the LED pin as output
Wire.begin();
}
void loop()
{
// Flash the LED on pin 13 just to show that something is happening
// Also serves as an indication that we're not "stuck" waiting for TWI data
ledState = !ledState;
if (ledState) {
digitalWrite(ledPin,HIGH);
}
else
{
digitalWrite(ledPin,LOW);
}
// Send a "A" command to the HMC6352
// This requests the current heading data
Wire.beginTransmission(slaveAddress);
Wire.send("A"); // The "Get Data" command
Wire.endTransmission();
delay(10); // The HMC6352 needs at least a 70us (microsecond) delay
// after this command. Using 10ms just makes it safe
// Read the 2 heading bytes, MSB first
// The resulting 16bit word is the compass heading in 10th's of a degree
// For example: a heading of 1345 would be 134.5 degrees
Wire.requestFrom(slaveAddress, 2); // Request the 2 byte heading (MSB comes first)
i = 0;
while(Wire.available() && i < 2)
{
headingData[i] = Wire.receive();
i++;
}
headingValue = headingData[0]*256 + headingData[1]; // Put the MSB and LSB together
Serial.print("Current heading: ");
Serial.print(int (headingValue / 10)); // The whole number part of the heading
Serial.print(".");
Serial.print(int (headingValue % 10)); // The fractional part of the heading
Serial.println(" degrees");
delay(500);
}