finally finished

finally finished - i repeat - finally finished

our exibit went rather well, we had some issues but everything went according to plan - almost

well, since it's all out of the way, i've also finished my portfolio, i thought it was due 16th of jun (according to the course profile) but an updated criteria sheet has been made and the real due date is the 23rd...

anyhow... i'm toasted... acutally frozen soild more like it - it's so cold

everything under control

the progress is fine, everyone is playing their role in their part

last tuesday the whole group went out together and did some shopping at reverse garbage... and then had an aweseom lunch (i had calamari and chips with ice coffee) at westend ^-^

we bought some materials to make a few different size dice, one being out of foam and another out of wood... etc... we'll be seeing which one of these would make the best size for the final prototype

while the other group members are making the pyhsical container to contain the electronics i will be in charge of programing the audurion, we finally have possession of the bluetooth audurino now i will be able to test the functions of the 3 axis accelerometer

coding and testing will be begining tommorrow

after the easter break

it is now week 7, we are moving along nicely, our group progression is imprroving

during the break, our team got together at aurchenflower with  maria's help we were able to interview 3 families about our project. the families included children aging from 8 to 15 along with their parents, these all went a bit longer than planned but it all worked out

the families were very helpful, they gave us a lot of infomation and  suggestions that we never thought of, one of the children pointed out that controling the hall way light would be a good future concept. another one is to control the entire house, by having the dice face control rooms instead of single appliances. these are all good suggestions that we can use to give evidences of our work

about the proposal

yesterday, we went through the process of explaing and expanding on our idea... the Power Dice, our team ended up choosing the idea based on the uniqueness and relativity of the idea.

our pressentation went rather well, we covered all the topics, and kept questions to a limit, meaning everyone understood what our pitch was about

to explain again in further depth, it involves a dice that remotely controls a power switch board. whatever the dice shows after the roll, it will determine what appliance is on (while all the others are switched off). while having  the dice as the main control, we're gonna attempt to power the dice with a dynamo mechanism to save power, and solar power for the switch board (either charging up a battery or having a wire coming from the outside into the home)

we're still discussing about the size and the weight, as well as what the dice is to be made out of

team formation

yesterday, we started to form our teams, i'm in team number 4, we all had several ideas about what to do, about what's doable and whats realistic, which fits under both sustainabilty and physical computing

one idea i came up with was an automatated moving LCD or plasma screen, this is achieved by  having a block with an accelerometer that acts as a little version of the screen. while turning this block, landscape or portrait, this turns the screen wirelessly 90 degrees... this is used for veiwing photos fullscreen rather than letterboxed

the other idea i thought of is to make a  dice that controls what appliancess in the house is turned on a one particular time... say, side number 1 is the tv, number 2 is the stereo, when the dice face showing 1 is up, the tc is on and only the tv... when 2 is faced up, the stereo turns on turning off the tv... and simlpy to turn off all the appliances, side 6 is turn upwards

virtual world within our world

i recalled something that i watched on tv awhile back, it was a programed called beyond tommorrow, it's kinda geeky i know but hey, i'm doing IT/multimedia it's my forte so it's ok.

well this youtube link pretty much wraps it up about what i'm going to talk about on monday

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvuF31-t9HU

this is a project by Hit Lab, Christchruch, New Zealand, they work with virtual reailty within the real world, the term being "AUGMENTED REAILTY" putting cgi or text ontop of or in the images we see, so it looks like it's really there but it's not

it's uses can be educational... showing 3d objects in layers, navigation, labeling cites and buildings, story telling, medicine and much much more...

i believe in ways it's a form of sustainability because we can reduce the amount of eletricity of billboards and signage, reducing materials such as tangible objects like mobile phone/pda/black berry/laptops where this can be replaced by a goggle/glasses/visors.... similar idea to the anime "denno coil" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennō_Coil

so instead of upgrading little gadgets, we can make a pair of glasses that has upgradable software... via internet access

Here's my research

http://www.tigoe.net/blog/category/physical%20computing/176/

i came across this site while i was trying to find something to do with  physical computing

it's a very neat site where it goes through the main catergoies of physical computing, i thought that i should post it up for people to have a look at, i'm gonna be talking about it a bit in the monday presentation