Creating stories with Footprints

Footprints –  prototyped using the Atmel-powered Arduino Uno – can best be described as a network of interactive soft puppets that help create and share illustrated stories.

Designed by Simone Capano, Footprints links various aspects of a child’s life, including school and family, by collecting and storing relevant data in the cloud.

So, how does it work? Well, according to Zoe Romano of Arduino, Footprints is typically initiated by a parent.

“With [a] smartphone, the parent can record a little vocal story, add some images proposed by Footprints about the story he or she has just told, like the story’s characters or other objects related to it. After, [the parent] can send it all to the child’s puppet,” Romano wrote in a recent Arduino blog post.

“At school, the child can listen to the story by placing the puppet on the tablet and playing with the images he or she has received to [create] a drawing about the story.”

Once the drawing is complete, Footprints send it back to the parent who then tracks the path of the stories shared with a child via the smartphone app.

“The app for the tablet is programmed with Processing, an open source platform for creating interactive digital graphics,” Capano explained.

“In order to make the puppet live I used Arduino, which allowed the communication between Processing and the little LED light placed inside the puppet. The communication between the two is [enabled via] the serial port of a computer.”

As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, the Arduino Uno is an Atmel-powered microcontroller board based on the ATmega328.

It features 14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs), 6 analog inputs, a 16 MHz ceramic resonator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header and a reset button. Simply put, the Uno contains everything needed to support the microcontroller; connect it to a computer with a USB cable or power it with a AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get started.