Planet Arduino

Last year MediaInteractiveDesign and PlayModes , two interactive design and creative technology studios based in Catalonia, collaborated to develop a system to control DIY Laser robot.

They created a new shield  to control Dinamyxel servomotors  to work with PWM laser drivers. The shield works using Arduino Ethernet programmed with a specific firmware to control laser and motor using Open Sound Control.

The project involved a team of 3 people (Eloi Maduell, Alex Posada and Santi Vilanova) coming from the field of audiovisual creativity, hardware engineering and software development.

To show us the way this system can be used, they sent us two of their projects. Enjoy!

RADIAL
Radial is a fully immersive audiovisual experience driven by cutting edge DIY technologies. Composed by a set of 8 moving blue laser heads and a kinetic light sculpture, it drives the audience into an abstract synaesthesic trip.
While laying down on the center of the installation, you let yourself be surrounded of synchronized three dimensional light compositions, multichannel sound and the intricate moving color patterns of the Particle.

Here’s the technical schematic of Radial, some pics, and below the video:

BLAUS

Blaus is an immersive space where light and sound relate intimately to impact on the visitor.  It can be a cube or a blossoming flower, a grid or a jellyfish; a mutant entity of reflecting lights which submerge the audience into a symbolical universe, driven by hidden forces of the architecture. Movement and reflections of light, sound and laser beams generates a kinetic atmosphere that transforms the architecture into the main character of a geometric play.

And here you can see some pics and the video about how they made it:

Last but not least for the implementation of the system they used and want to thank:

• Savage Electronic Dinamyxel library
• ZOSC library for Arduino
• Duration Open Source software  by James George, to control independently, compose, and play a full score for the laser diodes, servomotors, lights and music.

Rebuilt my lucky cat: whenever a page of my website is loaded, the cat will be waving its arm. There’s a light sensor so when its dark, the cats RGB-LED is changing the color instead of waving the arm. Changing the color of the LED is also possible with one of the buttons on the cats ears. The other one is the reset button. Used an arduino ethernet, a servo, two buttons, an RGB LED and two small yellow LEDs. The seven segment display is one that I harvested from an old stereo. It’s driven by the arduino and two shift registers. unfortunately I’ve soldered that one together for an older project, so that it doesn’t fit into the cat too. It shows the number of pageviews of the website.

via [instructables] visit the page of [Janwil]

[Jan] was looking for a way to monitor web site hits while sitting on the couch. This lead to the Lucky Cat Hit Counter. The hack gives a stock Lucky Cat some new hardware: a servo, a RGB led, a light sensor, and a 7 segment display. The added components are controlled by an Arduino Ethernet.

The Arduino Ethernet is set up as a web server. When a visitor fetches [Jan]‘s site, a GIF is requested from the Arduino. This trigger changes the RGB LED color, increments the seven segment display, and of course, makes the cat wave by actuating the servo. The light sensor is used to make the cat silent at night. When the light value is below a threshold, night mode is engaged and the cat doesn’t wave.

After the break is a video walk through of the Lucky Cat receiving some HTTP requests.