Mar 25
I’ve been collecting a good deal of data about the Barclays cycle hire bikes using a great little API, which has taken a lot of the pain out of screen scraping the Boris Bikes website. I’ve got several Mb of data now and have got to where I can start to do plots over time. …
Mar 24
I’m currently working on the NetChimes project with a group of friends and collaborators in the US and Europe. The result will be an interactive instrument that communicates OSC data live across 4 countries, and which takes local wind currents as inputs into the performance. For the London location (to be sited at Goldsmiths), I’ve …
Jan 26
In trying to push the limits of how precisely you can actually position a small induction motor, I ran into a lot of calibration problems – as expected. This is a definitely a job for a stepper. However, I then stepped back a moment to think about the information task. What do I really want …
Jan 16
I’ve been working on the physical side of my ambient display for a Barclay’s Cycle Scheme docking station on Theobald’s road – one that I use pretty often. The challenge for this display is that it uses a motor and drive assembly harvested from an obsolete HP printer. Properly, anything requiring precise positioning should use …
Nov 25
I’ve been working with my colleagues on a project for SonyEricsson around the release of their latest mobile phones series (Satio and Aino). The project involves using twitter to inflate a warehouse full of spacehoppers on a live webcam. The hoppers will be “released in the wild” as part of the product launch, and tweeters …
Aug 19
Sometimes, the ideal little package comes along and you don’t have to do all the hard work fabricating a physical user interace. While working on the Spot-On project at LKL, I found a very nify little “finger torch” that solves the problem of powering up an LED in a small form factor. This little guy’s …
Aug 04
Wow. It had to happen, of course. Shapeways have developed 3D printing in a material other than resin or polymer, the traditional materials for rapid prototyping physical objects. They can do it in stainless steel! The magic isn’t toooo surprising though, as they use the same techniques. Stainless steel dust is fused into a solid …
Aug 04
Whenever the big kid on the block makes a new announcement, it’s a popular pastime to beat up on him. People have had a lot of fun beating up on Microsoft for years and now that Google have matured and become one of the biggest fish in the sea, they are a target too. I’m …
