Arduino Troubleshooting

Wired up my sensor, Arduino and board... not sure why its not uploading my program. I am using the newest Arduino Mini (v 04) and I updated my version of Arduino (v10) and FTDI USB drivers. I went through the Troubleshooting page and still no success!

The error I get is:

avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x20
avrdude: stk500_disable(): protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x20

The pins to sensor data is as follows:

Analog0 = x axis
Analog1 = y axis
Analog2 = z axis
Analog3 = y rate
Analog4 = x rate
Digital2 = v-ref

Installation Model

I tried out a new program called Sketchup from Google that is more designed for environmental/structual 3D renderings. It's very rudimentary, but I think it communicates the general setup ... I thought about the design problem, and went back to my original inspiration. So instead of a chair, I am going to use a cradle-like structure to hold the projecor, which I intend to line w/ fabric.

I also adjusted the design so the cord comes from the middle part of the projector so if I hang it or lie it on a surface, it is either on top or underneath, not hanging out the end (which looked weird on the last design I did). In this way it looks more like an umbilical cord, as functionally these wires provide the same kind of support for the projector as an umbilical cord does for a baby.

Projector Diagrams - Internal Components

Projector Pix

Outside View


Split View (sans inside ribbing)

Moving into 4D

So I spent this week working with Steve on getting my projector body made in the rapid prototyping machine. I built a model in Maya and Steve rebuilt it in Rhino so it looks a hell of a lot better since I made mines w/ polygons and he used NURBS (smooth, baby!). It was fun watching him work in a different 3D program, and I learned a bit about the ID design process.

I'm also beginning to work in vvvv, which fortunately is pretty similar to Max/MSP/Jitter as it is patch-based. It's video capabilities are superior to Max so I hope implementing the video tracks won't be too difficult. To make it easier to program, I decided to limit the video loops to one per movie (a total of 10 films). I intend to edit select clips from one specific film, so each video loop has an non-linear edit of several scenes of the same film. The random access is linear, left to right (rotational direction), and the gesture is left to right, the up and down gesture would be zoom in and zoom out, and the speed (acceleration) affects the speed of playback for a certain clip.

I found a sample of a project someone did w/ gestures using VVVV... pretty darned cool.

Movietime

Movies movies movies has been my progress. I have 10 DVDs and watching one a night, logging the scenes I want to use. I realized that this part of my project is vital and that I needed to get my material sooner than later since it takes such a long time to log and digitize that amount of footage. Not that I am using a lot of footage, but I have to go through a lot of footage to find the clips I need.

On another note, its been great wrapping my head back around of what this project is really about, its is about the future and how we see the future. So, by watching all these films from different eras and styles it is having an interesting effect mentally measuring the feasibility of some of these futures. I'm working on mapping out the continuum of utopia (left) and dystopias (right) from these films, and focusing on purely the look of world as opposed to the reality of the film's view of utopia and dystopia (a perfect world that is actually bad eg Aeon Flux). The audio track will come from An Inconvenient Truth, contrasting present reality with future fantasy, literally clashing. I think that sensory experience will be interesting.

Steve is helping me to prototype my projector this weekend... woohoo!

And I finished my technical specs and systems diagram document. The main concern I came across was that the LED requires quite a bit of power so I don't know if a single 1 amp power supply will be enough since i'm also powering the LCD screen.