Artist creates interactive paintings with Bare Conductive

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This Denver-based innovator is bringing art to life with an audible, tactile and visual experience.

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Step into any gallery and you can expect to find “Do Not Touch” signs plastered everywhere. What this means is that, in most cases, the piece of art stimulates only one of the five human senses. However, a Denver-based originator has set out to change that by providing viewers with an audible, tactile and visual experience as they glance at the imagery before them.

Thomas “Detour” Evans is not your typical artist, nor has ever aspired to be. In his recent collection dubbed Art and Decibels, the 30-year-old creator has devised a series of interactive, sensor-laden paintings that are specifically meant to be touched in designated spots. By doing so, the image is magically brought to life through sound.

“This collection features the evolution of how I perceive art in the 21th century. With music as the foundation, It’s not enough for me to just use conventional methods; it’s empirical that I bring in other amazing artist of various forms to bring pieces alive,” Detour writes.

Upon first glance, Detour’s pieces appear to be meticulously crafted portraits of popular hip-hop stars, ranging from Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac to Nas and Kendrick Lamar. However, beneath the canvas of each image lies a unique combination of electronics and conductive ink. The artist has employed Bare Conductive’s Electric Paint along with a few Touch Boards (ATmega32U4) to enable each still-life to seamlessly double as an actual MIDI controller.

This gives audience members a dynamic way to interact with the painting and truly connect with the subject matter laid out on the canvas. Unlike countless other forms of wall-mounted art, Detour explains that viewers are now able to become fully immersed, both mentally and physically.

In order to bring this next-gen creations to life, Detour team up with several his close friends and veteran musicians to ensure the proper design of every painting so that they could play music and be manipulated like an instrument. This concept is something Detour has been brainstorming for years.

“In 2009 I became infatuated with figuring out how to connect the viewer with the subject on the canvas… I mulled over the idea of deconstructing and reconstructing a MIDI controller and installing it. Unfortunately the technology and the canvas didn’t mesh well. It wasn’t until I stumbled across the Bare Conductive Kickstarter that I saw some of the potential with the Touch Board. When I got the package and took the Electric Paint and Touch Board to one of my DJ/producer friends, it became the start of a long process to create these interactive paintings,” the artist revealed in his latest interview with Bare Conductive.

The creative process, which he has elaborated upon in a tutorial over on SparkFun, includes wiring the back of the canvas so that the sensors are emerging through the front in various locations. These sensors are connected to a computer and act as triggers in such a way that, when tapped, they emit a sound. Generally, every painting features around a dozen or touch points, each delivering a unique tune. Once the electronics are embedded, Detour paints his masterpiece just as he would any other portrait. Cognizant of where the sensors are located, he envisions how a particular piece needs to be manipulated — whether that’s using the outline of a milk crate as a matrix MIDI soundboard or lines on a t-shirt as a keyboard.

“I use the Touch Board in two different ways – one is the mode that is installed when it’s shipped. These pieces are usually combined with a bunch of other electronics that allows it to be a touch boom box painting with speakers,” Detour explains. “The other way is with the MIDI mode turned on and hooking it up to a computer. This way is the real ground breaker because it allows me to collaborate with friends and to have performance on each piece. It’s setup more like an instrument.”

Pretty sweet, right? Head over to Detour’s official page to learn more, as well as get started on creating a musical masterpiece of your own here.

WIOT is an open-source, Arduino-compatible dev board for the IoT

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WIOT is an Arduino-compatible board with an ESP-8266 interface and lithium-ion battery support.

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The brainchild of Ubld.It Electronics’ Chris Cockrum, WIOT is an open-source, rechargeable development board for the Internet of Things.

Based on an ATmega32U4, WIOT features integrated Wi-Fi capabilities through an on-board ESP-8266 module. The extremely compact device, which measures just 3.82” x 1.02” in size, is also entirely Arduino-compatible. This lets users design and develop their connected project within the Arduino IDE.

“I designed this board to be an easy-to-use way to get connect to WiFi from an Arduino-compatible board. This will allow anyone to write Arduino compatible sketches that can easily use 802.11b WiFi using the ESP-8266 (ESP-01) Wi-Fi module,” Cockrum writes.

The Li-Ion battery powered device operates at a voltage of 3.3V with a recommended input voltage of 5V, and can run for approximately 40 hours on no sleep. Meanwhile, on-board switching enables complete power-down of the ESP-8266. In terms of I/O, WIOT includes nine digital pins, five PWM channels and six analog input channels.

“With proper power management and intermittent Wi-Fi usage, the battery can last for days to months (depending on sleep time, Wi-Fi usage, Wi-Fi transmit usage, and other peripherals) without recharging,” Cockrum adds. “Since the board auto switches between external and battery power, a USB solar charger may be connected to power the unit indefinitely.”

Key specs include:

• MCU: ATmega32U4
• Flash memory: 32KB
• SRAM: 2.5KB
• EEPROM: 1KB
• Clock speed: 8MHz
• On-board lithium-ion battery management
• Automatic switching from external 5V power to battery
• Any 5V (500mA) source may be used to power and charge the unit
• ESP-8266 Wi-Fi module (ESP-01) with updated firmware
• Uses a through-hole mini-USB connector

Interested? WIOT is currently selling on Tindie for $45, while Cockrum has provided details on the board here.

HACKberry is an open source, 3D-printed bionic hand

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This 3D-printable bionic limb is controlled by a smartphone, powered by camera batteries and based on an Arduino. 

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If you sit back and reflect over the past couple of years, it’s truly remarkable how far the world of prosthetics has come thanks to recent advancements in 3D printing and open hardware. These artificial limbs have transcended well beyond the heavy, plastic and metal pieces of yesteryear into lightweight, sci-fi-like accessories that can be easily constructed and controlled in ways never before imagined.

Aside from providing these body-adorned gadgets with futuristic capabilities, what makes the sleek and futuristic prosthetics even more appealing are their price tags — a fraction of the cost of its older and commercial counterparts. With aspirations of accelerating development and increasing accessibility, Japan-based startup exiii has developed an open source bionic hand that is built around an Arduino Micro (ATmega32U4) and myoelectric sensors, uses a smartphone as the brains of its operation and relies upon camera batteries for power. Named HACKberry, most of the device is comprised of 3D-printed components that can be taken apart and swapped out whenever necessary.

“HACKberry is a practical model for daily use created through the cooperation of actual users. Hackberries, which are a species of trees included in the elm family, grow many branches,” exiii writes. “Our goal is to develop an artificial arm that would become the platform upon which developers and artificial arm users from all over the world are able to build as they wish.
The name represents our vision to ‘hack’ at problems, grow branches of joy that reach out to users and enable their ideas and efforts to bear fruit (‘berries’).”

While its newest model may not be ready for sale yet, the limb only took $300 to create. The latest iteration boasts a number improvements compared to its more expensive (and not open source) sibling, the Handoii, which includes a more flexible wrist for various movements, a smaller palm to make it attractive for women to wear, and enhanced compatibility to an assortment of camera batteries. Impressively, what really sets HACKberry apart is that its ductile fingers that can even differentiate between grasping and picking up based on the object, whether that’s turning the page of a magazine, grabbing some nail polish or even tying one’s shoelaces.

Want to learn more? exiii has made all of its files available on GitHub page. This includes printing and source codes for software, as well as all the data for its hand, sensor and battery boards. In the meantime, you can see HACKberry in action below!

Building a smart irrigation controller with Modulo

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The brainchild of Erin Tomson, Poseidon is an irrigation controller based on Modulo, Raspberry Pi and Flutter boards.

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Like many of us, Erin Tomson has vegetable garden in her backyard. While having fresh, organic crops right outside your door seems like a great idea, often times it can become a daunting task having to constantly water the plants. And though there are a number of commercial sprinkler systems available to automate and monitor the process, the Maker decided to take it upon herself to devise her own irrigation controller with the help of Modulo boards, Raspberry Pi and Flutter Wireless.

For those unfamiliar with Modulo, the tiny set of modular circuit boards — which is wrapping up an extremely successful campaign on Kickstarter — provide DIYers with an easy-to-use, hassle-free way to devise electronic projects. Each board is equipped with its own little processor (ATtiny841) that communicates with an ATmega32U4 driven Controller. Makers then can slide their modules right into the so-called Modulo Base which securely holds them in place.

Dubbed Poseidon, this recent project is comprised of three parts: the Modulo hardware that controls the system and provides a visual display of its status, a Raspberry Pi running the Open Sprinkler Pi software and Flutter Wireless modules to command the remote sprinkler valves.

As Tomson notes, piecing together the hardware was pretty straightforward. The Pi connects to a Modulo Controller via USB. Each valve is then linked to a pair of outputs on a Modulo Motor Driver, which in turn, provides power to the valve with positive and negative polarity to turn it on/off.

“I used Galcon 3652 valves, but any DC latching solenoid valve should work. For AC valves, you’d need to connect relays between the motor driver and valves,” she adds.

As for its web interface, the Maker ran Open Sprinkler Pi software that enabled her to display the various zones, set schedules, delay water based on weather forecasts, as well as manually operate the sprinklers. In order for the program to control the Modulo hardware, Tomson wrote a plug-in using the Modulo Python API to handle the outputs.

What’s more, should a garden be too far away from a home’s Wi-Fi network, she was able to add wireless connectivity to Poseidon through Flutter’s boards. Those units are equipped with an Atmel | SMART SAM3S Cortex-M3 MCU, while an ATSHA204 crypto engine keeps it protected from digital intruders. This allows Makers to easily (and securely) develop projects that communicate over a half-mile across a house, a neighborhood, or in this case, a backyard.

Tomson connected the Flutter controller over USB to the Raspberry Pi, which relays commands to the Flutter board and transmits them wirelessly to the remote station. Out in the garden, a second Flutter module is connected to a Modulo Base with another motor driver and color display.

“This secondary flutter setup controls the vegetable garden’s sprinkler valve and also show’s the system’s status. It’s a simple setup that works great,” the Maker reveals. “DC sprinkler valves like these don’t require very much power so you can even run the remote station off a solar panel and battery!”

With spring in full swing and summer just about here, make sure your garden and lawn are cared for with this DIY irrigation controller. Want one of your own? Head over to Modulo’s official project page here.

Tsunami is making signal generation accessible to everyone

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The Tsunami is a powerful and flexible signal generator, analyzer and experimenter’s kit built on the Arduino platform.

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With more Makers looking to design and build their own hardware, they are often faced with a difficult choice: either spend hundreds, or even thousands for that matter, on expensive test equipment and development boards or waste time trying to make do with what they can put together on a budget. Fortunately, one London-based startup has come up with solution. The Tsunami is a signal generator and frequency counter based on the highly-popular Arduino platform.

The brainchild of Arachnid Labs, Tsunami combines a versatile signal generator and frequency counter with an ATmega32U4 MCU, thereby making it possible to create sophisticated tools with a few lines of code, or simply load and run a wide variety of pre-written sketches for common tasks. The board’s capabilities also extend well beyond what you’d expect of a typical benchtop tool. Application ideas listed include music synthesis, packet radio modems, and reading and writing classic computer tapes, among countless other educational possibilities.

With Makers in mind, its creators have put quite a bit of effort into empowering the Tsunami to be easy as possible to use, thanks to the extensive Arduino library that covers all of Tsunami’s functions. Generating a sine wave, for instance, is as simple as telling the Tsunami what frequency you want.

“With its wide appeal and easy learning curve, the Arduino IDE was an obvious choice,” explains Arachnid Labs developer Nick Johnson. “And the ATmega MCU provided a familiar environment with the widest possible compatibility with existing code.”

The Tsunami’s most straightforward functions are frequency generation and counting. The Tsunami uses a high accuracy 2.5PPM crystal, which makes it an excellent tool to generate incredibly precise frequencies, in addition to measuring them with phenomenal accuracy. For comparison, a typical “high quality” crystal is between eight and 25 times less accurate, the team reveals.

“With its highly accurate crystal, you can use the Tsunami to generate signals — sine, triangle, and square waves — all the way from DC up to around two megahertz. A versatile analog fron-tend allows you to adjust amplitude from 0V to 6V peak to peak, and DC offset by up to 2V either side of ground,” Johnson adds.

Likewise, the Tsunami can be used to measure signals. The tool is equipped with a high speed comparator tasked with capturing the frequency, a peak detector for quantifying signal amplitude, and a phase detector to detect phase, of course. Each of these facilities work up to nearly eight megahertz.

By connecting the output of the Tsunami to an analog filter or an audio amplifier, and employ the Tsunami’s input to capture what comes out, it’s even possible to measure how it responds at different frequencies. The phase detector senses the phase delay, which means a user can construct bode plots.

“That’s not all you can do with the Tsunami, though. The DDS has built-in support for phase and frequency modulation, and the Tsunami adds on support for amplitude modulation too. With just a few lines of code you can take digital data and modulate it onto an audio or RF signal at any frequency the Tsunami supports, and using the Tsunami’s input features, you can demodulate data.”

For those unfamiliar with DDS, this refers to the process of generating waveforms directly from digital data, and is commonly implemented in applications such as radio communications, test equipment, proximity and motion detection, and audio synthesizers. Unfortunately, many DDS chips come in difficult to solder packages and have complex interfaces. That was until now. Arachnid Labs has provided Makers with an on-board DDS chip and comprehensive libraries and sample applications for use familiar Arduino environment.

Recently, Arduino revealed that the board became the latest member of its growing Arduino At Heart program. At the moment, Tsunami can be found on CrowdSupply, where the team nearly doubled its original $14,785 pledge goal. The first wave of units will ship in August 2015.

This interactive dress is inspired by autumn trees

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Fall is an interactive garment that mimics nature’s responsive systems. 

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In what would appear to be a costume straight out of a Lady Gaga or Katy Perry music video, Fall is an interactive dress that is inspired by nature’s seasonal occurrence of trees losing their leaves. The brainchild of Birce Özkan, the Maker specifically designed her foliage-colored piece to mimic the b uilt-in system of trees as they shed their leaves as a result of surrounding environmental factors.

“My thesis project was evolved around the questions, What if when the temperature got hot suddenly, our clothes would start to break apart in response? What if they had the skill to behave depending on the surrounding conditions? What if garments had the ability to sense the environment just like living organisms? Those questions let me find the purpose for my thesis,” Özkan explains.

“In the fall, as the days shorten, and the temperature gets colder, the trees, without the light they need to sustain their chlorophyll, shed their leaves to keep their energy to survive for the winter ahead. This process was the inspiration for creating my garment’s mechanism. To prepare for the fall of leaves, trees activate ‘scissor cells’ that split to create a bumping layer that forces the leaves out of place, destabilizing them so that they fall,” the Maker writes.

This process led Özkan to devise her own garment’s mechanism by using light from a simulated environment that would activate the outfit’s embedded Arduino Micro (ATmega32U4), Adafruit Lux Sensor and four servo motors. The lesser the light, the faster the servo motors move, which in turn, causes the leaves to fall. These servos are attached to steel wires, housed inside clear tubes at the back of the dress.

“At the site of each hole, I attached the leaves by melting wax onto steel wires. When there is less light, the servos start to speed up and pull the steel wire. When the thread is pulled sideways, the leaf hits the side of the tube’s hole which breaks the wax. In that way, the mechanism makes leaves fall down,” she adds.

In true DIY fashion (no pun intended), the color palette for the ensemble was made to emulate that of autumn, while its fabric was laser cut into stylized leaf shapes, spray painted and eventually attached to a cotton base.

“I strongly believe that Fall can influence the fashion world to become more dynamic and to increase the way clothes can react to the world around them. I want clothing to have more responsiveness to the environment, so that instead of people always change their clothes, the clothes can sometimes change themselves.”

Want to see Özkan’s work in action? Watch the video below, and head over to the Maker’s official page to discover how she is converging both fashion and technology in an extremely unique way. Hat tip to our friends over at Adafruit for coming across this project!

This dancer’s LED dress responds to hand motion

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LEDs embedded in the dancer’s dress are triggered by quick hand motions and illuminate the costume.

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Created by Danielle Jordan, in collaboration with Makers Angie Pittman, Eric Norbury and Jeff Putney, E-Motion Control is a thesis project exploring the construction and analysis of motion-controlled dance costumes. Driven by a pair of Adafruit FLORA (ATmega32U4), the garment packs two accelerometers, 50 RGB NeoPixels, some AWG hookup wire and two LiPo batteries for power.

Embedded beneath the dancer’s dress, the set of LEDs are programmed to be triggered by rapid hand motions. When either of the accelerometers mounted on the back of both hands sense a certain amount of movement along the Y or Z axis, a trail of NeoPixels illuminate the dress’ bodice in whimsical fashion.

Intrigued? Those wishing to read its accompanying research paper will have to wait until its available. In the meantime, you can watch the dress in action below. Now, imagine if the dancer complemented the outfit with a pair of Lesia Trubat’s Electronic Laces on her feet to recreate the artistic movements into graphical data and imagery.

Creating a capacitive iPad cover with Bare Conductive

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INKO is part capacitive cover, part keyboard and a whole lot of awesome. 

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If you’re the owner of an iPad and have long been searching for a cover that offered a bit more functionality, you’re in luck. Designed by Alexandre Echasseriau, INKO is both a capacitive cover and a keyboard. The device is comprised of conductive paint injected into a leather sleeve that is capable of transmitting a signal from the keyboard to the iPad via a mini Bluetooth antenna.

Unveiled earlier this spring at the 2015 Saint Etienne Biennale, INKO combines fine leather craftsmanship along with Bare Conductive’s Electric Paint and Touch Board (ATmega32U4) to transform an ordinary protective shield into a working touchpad. The idea was first conceived as a way to incorporate a printed circuit board within the hide in order to establish an electrical connection that could relay a signal to its accompanying mobile device.

Initially, tattoo artist Jéremy Lorenzato was tasked with injecting the Electric Paint into the thickness of the material. However, after determining that manually inking the hide was not suitable for the project, the process was eventually replaced by a system dubbed “Tatoué,” the brainchild of French design group Appropriate Audiences. (You may recall the team and their hacked machine from last year.) The Maker trio had modded a MakerBot Replicator to create an automated tattoo “printer” that could etch permanent artwork on human skin, and now leather as well.

Meanwhile, the actual shape of the cover/keyboard was formed in a matter of just one step by leather worker David Rosenblum by employing an embossing technique to achieve that “keystroke” feel.

“I really wanted to explore the potential of Electric Paint. Tattooing the paint rather than screen printing or painting opened up an opportunity to create a sustainable and robust PCB circuit,” Echasseriau told Bare Conductive in a recent interview. “The luck was that after a little dilution, the paint could be perfectly tattooed and conducts very well.”

Intrigued? Head over to INKO’s official page here.

Build an automatic temp controller for your grill with Modulo

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Slow and steady wins the taste!

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It’s 4th of July weekend, and that can mean only one thing: time to cue the Springsteen and fire up the grill! Given the finger-lickin’ deliciousness of BBQ ribs, chicken and pulled pork, it’s no wonder that it has become one of the oldest and most popular cooking methods throughout the world. One style in particular, American Southern, involves roasting meat at low temperatures for many hours in the presence of smoke emitted from a charcoal grill. This also happens to be former Pixar engineer and Modulo Labs founder Erin Tomson’s favorite.

As the Maker explains, though charcoal may be an excellent fuel source, it can be a bit difficult to maintain stable temperatures for extended periods of time. And so, she decided to build an automated temperature controller for her grill using a set of Modulo devices.

For those unfamiliar with Modulo, the tiny set of modular circuit boards — which recently launched on Kickstarter — provide DIYers with an easy-to-use, hassle-free way to devise electronic projects. Each board is equipped with its own little processor (ATtiny841) that communicates with an ATmega32U4 driven Controller. Makers can slide their modules right into the so-called Modulo Base which securely holds them in place.

In order to streamline her BBQing process, Tomson employed one Modulo Base along with four other modular pieces. These included an Arduino-programmable controller as the brains of the operation, a full-color OLED display to show the temperature and its coinciding graphs, a knob for setting and adjusting parameters, as well as a thermocouple interface to measure the extreme temperatures within the grill. From there, the Modulo Arduino Library simplifies communication between the main board and its corresponding modules.

“You simply create an object for each module that you’re using,” Tomson adds. “I tested the system by BBQing pork spare ribs and beef back ribs. At first the controller needed some parameters to be tweaked and minor bugs to be fixed, but after an hour or so it was dialed in and kept a steady temperature for the remainder of the cook. Though it seemed to work well, I think I should probably ‘test’ it again soon.”

Want to create an automated temp controller for your charcoal grill? Head over to the Maker’s entire project log on Hackster.io.

Tah is a LEGO block for the Internet of Things

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Tah is an open-source dev board that lets Makers create their own projects and connect them to their mobile device.

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Developed by Indian startup Revealing Hour Creations, Tah is an Arduino-compatible, open-source development board that helps Makers build their own smart projects and connect them to their mobile device over Bluetooth Low Energy. Designed for use as a beacon, a microcontroller and an HID device, the platform employs a smartphone’s built-in accelerometer, gyroscope and other sensors to trigger events in the physical world.

Embedded with an ATmega32U4, Makers can easily apply their Arduino programming skills to the Tah. The megaAVR MCU at its heart features on-board USB 2.0 support, which directly programs the Tah without the need of a USB-to-Serial converter. In addition, the board can act as a USB human interface device (HID), thus enabling a user to devise their own keyboard, mouse, joystick, or other input devices without having to install special software on the host computer.

“We’ve already made sample applications that allow you to control your PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation and Xbox (coming soon) without ever needing to write any code for those platforms — all you need to do is program your Tah board and make a smartphone app, for which we’ve also provided open source examples for both iOS and Android to get you started,” its creators add.

Each Tah can serve as a Bluetooth beacon as well, which communicates a smartphone to reveal its exact location based on its unique identifier — something that can be quite useful for indoor navigation and contextual notifications.

And what’s more, the open-source board is expandable through a relay and sensor, IR transceiver and Arduino Uno breakout shields. For instance, a user can devise a universal remote for their smart appliances or control their gaming system right from their phone.

Late last year, Revealing Hour Creations launched a crowdfunding campaign for its project, where it quickly surpassed its initial pledge goal. If you’d like to get your hands on one, head on over to its CrowdSupply page here. Tah is now shipping to backers.