Planet Arduino

Despite the title, this isn’t a tale of conversing with Michael Jackson’s chimp. Rather, it is about [KyungYun]’s machine that transforms speech into whimsical bubbles. While the speech control is novel, we were more fascinated with how the mechanism uses a system of strings to blow bubbles, along with the workmanship to make the device portable.

The rate of fire isn’t that great, so the bubbles appear to simply get larger the longer you talk. Essentially, the device increases the size of the iris — the part that blows the bubble — until you pause speaking. Then it burps out a bubble.

The iris mechanism has borrowed ideas from a much larger bubble machine, though the actual build is much smaller and uses both laser-cut and 3D printed pieces. A Teensy provides the brain, and there’s a pump for transferring bubble solution into the iris.

As best we can tell, soapy liquid drips down the strings which are touching. When the strings separate, it forms a soap film between them. A burst of air, then, can produce a bubble. It is possible to make colored bubble solution and we were trying to think of a way to make different colors for different kinds of sounds, although, having three iris mechanism would make the device much less portable. Perhaps it would be more practical to have multiple tanks of the solution and mix them differently based on sound analysis. In any event, this would be a fun project to extend with some creative additions.

We’ve seen more than one approach to blowing bubbles. If you want lots of bubbles, you might 3D print this contraption.

“Data transparency” is a project by Jiayu Liu, a designer and media artist, interested in physical data visualisation and interactive code. The installation runs on Arduino Mega: when the microphone senses a person’s blow, it transforms it in a Led animation and then activates the bubble machine for 8 seconds. The project is not aiming to visualize any specific data but “data visualization” itself:

In my point of view, data is not dissimilar to a conclusion of our past, and we need it for our future. When we see a data from a computer, it is something that has already happened. We use intelligent methods of computing science to analyze the data so that to predict the future. We are living in a world of data, and data is like a language objectively describing our past. In this work, I take more attention on rethinking and recalibrating the role of data in our lives, and the relationship between the virtual world we build as a main method of data storing, analyzing and visualization and ourselves.

Also, I am thinking of that it is better to make sense of the role of data visualization before really visualizing it. Finally, I found a good perspective to see how data connects with our lives, which is Time.
Therefore, the project is not aiming to visualize any specific data but what I am trying to visualize is the “data visualization” itself. I would like to bring a new experience to the viewer in different space. So I want to create a interesting play space and bubble game to the viewer . Let them have a really funny and relaxing experience.

Take a look at the “making of” video below to see it in action:

Thomas Renck is a coder and a maker. He went to Disneyland, saw a bunch of little kids having fun with bubble guns and realized that a bubble blaster is a sure way to measurably improve joy and happiness in life.

Back home, it took only two hours to create and add-on to automate the bubble blaster using a 3d printer, Arduino Micro and a servo:

On his blog you can find the tutorial, the sketch and the 3d files to make one yourself and bring more happiness in your life too!