Gumball

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

I added a new Processing thing I made… called Gumball.

It’s not that cool, but great to play with for like 20 seconds. =P

Posted in: Art, Projects.

Particles in Processing

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, November 5th, 2008

I finally finished off the “Define Dancing” Processing artwork that I started a long time ago! The reason why I didn’t finish it back then was because the colours were messed up. I figured them out, and while playing with the colours, I created another program called Particle Finger Painting
Here’s the Define Dancing one…

You can move your mouse around, and one particles will stay with it. All of the other particles are attracted to it, but some are stronger than the others. Plus, there’s forces between all of the particles too - some of them are negative, which results in “fireworks”-like collisions
Here’s the Particle Finger Painting one-

I really like this one… it’s the same as the Define Dancing one, but the layering and transperency of the ellipses are different.

They both use the traer physics library for the particles.
Try the live ones out- they’re probably laggy since it’s in a browser. In that case, you should download Processing and try them out. It’s a good IDE to have anyway!

Posted in: Animation, Art, Programming, Projects.

Problem after Problem after Problem

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, October 16th, 2008

Wow, hahahaha I meant to post this yesterday! I wrote it all up… then forgot! Haaa woow

It really feels like I’ve been working on this software to control MANOI for ages now. On Friday I thought that I was really close to finishing off- that it would be so simple to send a variable from Processing to the Arduino.

Evidently, that assumption is DEAD WRONG! I have to send it through Serial. This raises many problems, like the possibility that the data might be fed to the SSC as well.

I’m now powering the SSC-32 by the Arduino. It’s plugged in to the Gnd and pin 6, so I can tell it to turn on or off. PLUS, I have a latching switch on the 5V, just in case.

So it almost feels like I can safely say that I’m really close to finishing off. I’m playing around with code that only sends data to Arduino when it knows it will receive it. Of course, when I try to send data to the SSC-32 it messes the whole process.

The moon last night (2 nights ago) was really bright… it looked pretty through my telescope This Harvest Moon is one of my favourites because you can see Tycho Crater.

Posted in: MANOI, Programming, Projects, Robot.

Fancy FFT Effect in Processing

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, September 20th, 2008

I created the visualization of a sound wave that I wanted to do for a while
I used Processing, with the minim library.

Here’s a video of it:

It’s based on the code by Tom Gerhardt Mine differs in the way that it “erases” (actually draws a black rectangle over the stage) some of the past blobs. This way it creates the effect of an actual live visualization of the FFT log average of the sound, rather than an average of an average.
Download the code here!

I’m going to try to see if I can make this my visualization of the sound wave through live input…

Posted in: Animation, Art, Other, Programming, Projects.

I

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Wall-E is probably the CUTEST robot ever. (Except for my Styrobots, of course!) The way he says his name ‘WwwwaaallLL Eee’ is irresistible.
I see Wall-E everywhere. And, much to my joy one day… I looked out the back window, and I saw Wall-E! This means that at least once per day, I get to see Wall-E! WOOT!

*note: pics taken a long time ago

I really can’t wait until this movie comes out!! Imagine how cool Epcot will be, too. Meet the Robinsons + Wall-E!! It’s quite crazy how Pixar is just doing better and better with each animation they make. I really never thought that anything would be better than Finding Nemo, ever.

One of the things I can’t wait for is the robot! Er well, I can’t wait for me to gently tear apart the robot and hack it OR make it run on an Arduino! How cool would that be?! Having a Wall-E working off of an Arduino, connected to Processing. I could have all sorts of ultrasonic sensors… personalize it… make a conversational program (based off of Robbie the Robot) for it… WOOT!

Check out these two videos - they’re REALLY cool!

Wall-E ROCKS!

Posted in: News, Projects, Robot, Robot News.