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
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);
}
OLPC Updates · posted by vaibhav bhawsar 581 days ago
Enough being said about OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) am only going to provide links to interesting comments on/regarding the OLPC program headed by Nicholas Negroponte.
Shuchi Grover an Indian educator writes about OLPC and a few reasons why OLPC may have to re look the place it occupies in the Indian education milieu.
The $100 laptop
Here is one of Ethan Zukerman of GlobalVoices.org
Here you will find the OLPC News.
StrangeMap · posted by vaibhav bhawsar 589 days ago
What is it?
A photo service where you can shoot familiar people/strangers and post those photos up on a website to share with other strangers.
Who are familiar Strangers?
People who you see everyday while you take the subway or walk to school. But they are essentially strangers.
So how does it work?
You take a picture, tag it with the place you were in- the address. Send it to mobtree{att}recombine…net
The picture is logged and shows up as a new familiar stranger on the community page. Now other users can add any info about the person you just shot. Does this scare you?
See more about it in these images-
See this pdf for higher resolution wireframes and flow (WIP)-
wireframesprint.pdf
Site for StrangeMap
(This is work in progress)
Why are you doing this?
Cause I don’t like familiar strangers who don’t talk to me? No. Is it urban voyeurism? Or is it about eventually getting to know strangers you see everyday? Eventually you wouldn’t need this app to mark your strangers.
Will there be a day when a familiar stranger who you shot becomes your friend?
Maybe.
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a note on textmarks · posted by vaibhav bhawsar 626 days ago
What is TextMarks ?
why is Textmarks interesting?
I find it interesting because it allows one to publish or subscribe to a certain channel of information by sending a text message from their mobile phone. I haven’t tried it yet but it sounds like an idea which is similar to RSS or ATOM feed for blogs.
You can also publish a blog post from your phone using one of the widgets they provide on the site.
This is how the site defines a textmark:
A testmark is a keyword you select that people can text message to 41411 and receive a custom response from you. Users can also subscribe to your Textmark to get updates and alerts.
The way is see a Textmark is a combination of a chat room and a “TOPIC” discussion or even a mobile shout-box.
An example:
I create a Textmark called “Iamfrustrated” by going to textmarks.com. I need not register at this point. Next I am asked to enter the main body text that will be sent to a subscriber of “Iamfrustrated”. So I enter “I am frustrated by how everyone looks frustrated on the morning train”. So at this point I can make “Iamfrustrated” public so that people can also update it. Now if you are subscribed to “Iamfrustrated” ( which is done by sending “SUB iamfrustrated” to 41411) you can publish or ping people on this channel with whatever you want in less than 100 chars.
(I have set this channel/textmark in real so try it out-see their HELP section for more commands)
There is also an option to publish to a textmark from the site. You can also add a widget to your site which reflects the latest content of a given textmark.
It is a pretty open system of sharing or publishing or broadcasting or narrowcasting or ranting. You subscribe if you care else don’t sort of thing.
Ubiquitous Computing · posted by vaibhav bhawsar 626 days ago
Having heard, read and seen a lot on ubiquitous computing for some time now I decided to go back in time when Mark Weiser, called the father of Ubi Comp, first started writing about it. To my surprise many of the things he wrote still hold true even today after about 13 years! So I recap a few things from this article.
Notes from Ubiquitous Computing and The world is not a desktop by Mark Weiser
People work in a world of shared situations and unexamined technological skills…however the computer today is isolated and isolating from the overall situation, and fails to get out of the way of the work.
The personal computer continues to be the most consuming tool of any personal or collaborative process.
He places the field of virtual reality almost as an opposite reaction to the idea of Ubi Comp. In a Ubi Comp experience the user continues to interact with the real world as opposed to the virtual world- and its interface. Extending this observation it becomes apparent that even mobile computing today does not make an effort to integrate the user back into his/her surroundings. All efforts to do so are a result of gazing into tiny inch screens of a mobile phone/PDA or personal assistant. Mobile devices still seek partial attention if not total attention of the user.
The future ubiquitous computer is not a PDA, phone or a digital assistant…Since information will be accessible everywhere one would not need to carry anything.
Ubiquitous computing has as its goal the enhancing computer use by making many computers available throughout the physical environment, but making them effectively invisible to the user.
Invisibility is a key factor in creating tools for interacting with the world. He brings up the example of how eyeglasses are a good tool- “you look at the world, not the eyeglasses”. I think this is an inspiring way of looking at urban computing tools and how they should appear/disappear in the user’s surroundings.
On Voice input- I want to talk to(or listen) people around me, not to my computer… Voice input is attention grabbing.
Work on ubiquitous computing is still at an early phase. Most work now is concentrating on the mobile infrastructure for wireless networking. Because ubiquitous computing envisions hundreds of wireless computers in every office, its need for wireless bandwidth is prodigious.
Weiser towards the end talks about creating interpolable mobile networks that can accomodate a variety of mobile devices. In the present day we continue to have a problem defining a standard(more so an open standard) or protocol required for a user friendly mobile infrastructure as opposed to a carrier friendly one.
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