instructables progress

So far:
I have ordered and recieved an arduino uno, motorolla bluetooth headset, bluetooth mini speaker, and a nunchuck extender cable. I also bought a wireless nuncheck controller, a servo, and 2 different sized dolls.

I have just finished trying to do some work on it. I cant get the two bluetooth devises to pair and have no idea how to fix that. I tried following the instructable on wireless nunchuck controlling the arduino but have reached a stall because my knowledge is extremely limited and I dont want to break anything. Then I started connecting my servo to the arduino but have reached a stall there as well. So seeing as I have no one to ask for assistance here I will just wait for class.

octopus sound machine info

It just occurred to me that i ought to post some information about the sound machine because people who have watched the video have no idea what they are seeing.
So, I made the third design of circuit boards from the handout in class to make the occilating sound machine. Then I found the little stuffed octopus toy at Hudson's Treasure Hunt for like a dollar. It was perfect because of all the legs and since it was originally a dice game, it has a zipper pouch on the bottom were dice were stored.
I dug through my small home tool kit and found 5 nails of the same size to use for the touch points. I then cut lengths of wire and after stripping the ends, wrapped the wire around the nail and taped it together with electrical tape. I poked a small hole in 5 of the legs of the octopus and threaded a wire length through each of them so that the nail head wouldn't fit through the hole. I added a drop of superglue around each nailhead to ensure it wouldnt slip into the hole. After all the wires were in place I soldered them to the curcuit board and then zipped the board into the pocket. This is what I had done until I remembered that I needed to add my toy.

My original toy was a lost cause with my limited electronic altering abilities so I went out in search of a new one. I found this cool little paperjams guitar pic that plays chords from 3 different songs when you make a strumming motion for like $7. I took it apart and rigged it so that you had to push a certain spot to make it work instead of shaking it. Then I decided to attach it to the nob of one of the eyes from the inside so that it would play when you poke the eye. It was a very frustrating task! It took some serious fenageling but I got somewhat working. The button kind of travels a little so you have to search for it, which is kinda fun. So, there you have the inner workings of the octopus sound machine.

Octopus sound machine video

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intervention videos

more intervention photos

instructables update

So i've been tossing around a few new ideas for this project. One of them is making talking dolls of people i know. Zander says "You know what?" all the time!!! So I was thinking of making a stuffed doll of him with a button in the arm that when pushed will play a recording of him saying You know what? And one of my brother which would be more complicated because it would have several sayings that it would cycle through.
Like this stewie doll.

And then I was thinking about how Thomas said that he hacked a webcam on his shoulder to be controlled by wiimote and I was thinking of building on this idea. I love the movie the Emperor's New Groove and Krunk's shoulder angels are one of my favorite parts. So I was thinking of getting a really creepy doll, like a living dead doll to sit on my shoulder with a web cam in its head that would be controlled by a nunchuck so that I could turn the dolls head to follow people that walk by and get it all on tape! these are living dead dolls:


Nunchuck hack: http://www.instructables.com/id/Wireless-Wii-Nunchuck-control-of-Arduino-projects/step7/The-software/
animatronic assemblies: http://www.instructables.com/id/Animatronic-Monkey/   and
http://www.instructables.com/id/Simple-Animatronics-with-Servos/step3/Rotator-Cuffs-and-Hip-Flexors/

Maybe even make a devil and an angel to be actual shoulder angels. They would have speakers in them that you could use the controller to speak through to make them whisper suggestions in your ear. This would be great if you walked through the mall and had a friend controlling each doll following at a distance so that they could control the dolls movements and words. Imagine seeing that at the mall!

video trouble

I am trying to uplaod the video footage of the intervention project but its giving me trouble. I waited for one to load for over 2 hours with no luck. I'll keep trying.

WOW! intervention update

So I drove home with ART! in throwies on my hood. I parked in my normal spot at my apartment building and decided to leave the throwies on the car overnight and put them up in the morning. Today I was leaving the apartment thinking how I still had to clean them off the car before I got on the highway cause I wasnt sure they would stay put at 80 mph. I walk outside and lock the door and there is a group of maybe 8 kids playing outside a ways from me and I hear them say something to the effect of " its the lady we took..." and they all take off, running around the corner of a building. I get to my car to see that there isn't a SINGLE throwie left! Something tells me they had a little something to do with that. LOL! As I was pulling out I saw them peeking around the side of the building at me and a little boy, maybe about 3 yrs old started running circles with a throwie in his hand! Little do they know that they saved me the time and trouble of cleaning them up!!!!

Intervention Project Documentation photos

intervention project summary

The project is done. It was done in 2 parts.

Part 1: Friday, at Friday Night Fun at work I brought in throwie materials for the art project of the night. I set up at the art table and videoed the first 4 kids to make throwies and they tested them out in the kitchen area. which got plenty of attention from the other kids because kids arent allowed in the kitchen area normally. After that, the kids kept coming to make throwies. Several wanted to make more but I didn't have enough for that so they were disappointed. I sent letters home with the kids who made them telling the parents to ask about the throwies and about my plans for the project for the next night. Then I took about 30 kids with their throwies outside on the playground to play with them and it was awesome! All the red and yellow lights floating about, but sadly, my camera wasnt able to pick it up very well :(

Part 2:  I went out last night with over 100 throwies in red and yellow with a handful of purple to the parkinglot of a plaza that holds gamestop and starbucks. I got permission from a furniture store there to use their big moving truck and I was excited because it was a big surface to work with. Got out there with my signs and chair and throwies to find out the metal looking truck isnt magnetic in the least. I was so Bummed! I ended up having to use my car which is pretty small and not as exciting as the original idea. The LeBlanc family I met at work got there soon after I did and they brought signs they had made for me. They helped me make the rest of the throwies and stayed through the whole project. So the weather decided to be the coldest of the season and we were freezing the whole time. We danced and held signs that said to honk in you like and played with the throwies. Finally one little boy came out and played for a little bit. He was good! He got them to stick one after another after another! After that, 2 young men showed up and made the whole night better! They took over! Took the signs, ran up and down the street and yelled. They even darted across the street to the walgreens and started tagging people's cars and the pay phone with throwies. Then they decided that if poeple honk it means they want one and started trying to put them on the cars as they drove by. When traffic was stopped at the light, one of them ran across the road and planted a throwie on the back of an unsuspecting car but it fell off. Finally, 3 more kids from Friday Night Fun showed up and helped out. A cop drove by and we were all jumping and screaming and he pulled in the lot and I was kinda scared! But he was cool, he laughed when we told him what we were doing and then had us put some throwies on the top of his car and when he drove past us on the road again he played his siren for us! When I left for the night, I spelled ART! on my hood and drove home that way.

instructables project idea

My youngest son, Kaiden, is completely into Yo Gabba Gabba at the moment. He always wants to watch the movie and he dances like crazy to the songs. I was thinking that I might as well make something for this project that i will want to keep and that will be useful in some way. Combine that with needing more entertainment for my kids so that I can do homework in peace and this idea was born.

So his favorite song is the Hold Still song, you can see it here:

http://youtu.be/sLSpXaokFkc

Zander and Kaiden both like the character Brobee. So my idea will use Brobee.

I want to make a freeze dance game. I want Brobee to dance and sing the hold still song and have a sensor of some kind so that it can tell if the kids freeze or not. Maybe it can tell who is player one and who is player two and it will call out Player one, you're out! or something like that. So Freeze dance Brobee is my plan.
I haven't much of a clue how to do what I want. I browsed instructables for some motion sensor how to's but I havent really found what I want.

I'm thinking that I could somehow combine the dancing Brobee doll:

and either a kinect or a wiimote and sensor bar

and the song downloaded on itunes to make my freeze dance game.



My second idea is a back pack umbrella. It is my invention that combines a backpack and an umbrella. the umbrella would be inside the backpack in the place that the handle collapses into on the rolling back back models so that it is strong enough to stay put in windy weather. There would be a button on the shoulder strap that releases the umbrella. The umbrella would shoot out and then when it is extended above the head, it would open out. This way you wouldn't have to hold the umbrella so that your hands are free to carry groceries, art projects, or children. Very convenient if I say so myself.

oscillating octopus

NBC reponse 2

NBC Response #2 ch 3 and 4

First off,

            Your own body is a phantom, one that your brain has temporarily

constructed purely for convenience.

—V. S. Ramachandran and S. Blakeslee

That is an awesome quote to remember. The three experiments presented give interesting testimony for this quote.       The fact that you can perceive your nose as being 2 feet long after only a few minutes of the sensations provided by the volunteer even though the knowledge you have had your whole life says that it cannot be so is confounding. After only a few moments in time, you can negate information you have held for years based on your perceptions at that moment in time! I can’t wait to go to work to try the nose elongation experiment. I, unfortunately, cannot try it now as I only have a 5 year old and a 1 year old to help me at the moment. I will put Ramachandran and Blakeslee quote stated above on the board as the quote of the week and add the experiments to my lesson plan for the week for education and career.

          This ability to perceive sensations is evident in phantom limb patients. They continue to feel pain in a limb that is no longer there and this can be fixed in an interesting way. The example given is in a patient feeling that the phantom hand is clinched. They simply used a mirror thing to project the image of the existing hand in the place the missing limb should be so that the patient can look down and see a hand where the missing hand should be and then clinch and unclench the existing hand. This fools the brain into thinking all is well and fixes the problem! This whole thing with the tricking of the brain is great in cases such as this to help people, but one can only imagine what can be done with this knowledge by people with ill intentions. Think of the possibilities of torture that can arise with this knowledge. I know, I sound like something out of a science fiction novel, but it’s true. There are people in the world that will misuse this astounding information. This stuff is all fascinating to consider.

lab update

So we worked on our occilating circuits this week. I chose design 3 because it had numerous touch points and the least number of resistors. I dont know why but I wanted less resistors. I changed one of the capacitors from 100uF to 22uF simply because I didnt realize I needed a third cap and just used one I had from previous labs. My circuit did not work the first try but Will fixed it for me. One part was one position off, go figure. The thing didnt make much noise, just some quiet little static noises, but I got it tomake a siren sound once which was coolness but I couldnt replicate it.

 I drew my plans on photoshop but have since changed the 22uF capacitor to a 100uF. I soldered all the parts to the board, which is much easier than working on the bread board in my opinion, then tested the circuit. It worked on the first try which is awesome. The result was less than dersireable. It barely made any noises and everyone else was getting really loud cool sounds so I changed the cap back to the original design's suggestion. Then it was fun! All kinds of cool, fun, loud, give you a headache sounds ensued.

Will was playing with it and he was getting a great sound when he just barely poked the touch point. I tried the same, but didnt get any sound. Talk about disappointing, but then while he was holding 2 wires and I was still holding the third, he poked my arm with his free hand and, behold, the cool sound came! I then turned into a poke Megan fest. He made different variations of the sound by touching different places on my arms, hands, face, and neck. Then another classmate joined in the festivities. We each had a wire and the 2 of them played the circuit through me. It was a riot!

NBC response 1

NBC response #1 ch 1 and 2

                Well I am relieved, to say the least, that this text is much easier to comprehend and more interesting than the previous reading. I find the information and viewpoints presented in these first two chapters very intriguing.  The notion that we are all cyborgs is incredible. To think that I am a cyborg because of my dependence on my cell phone for the time, phone numbers, weather reports, movie show times, appointment dates, and notes to remember. Our brains and smarts aren’t solely responsible for, say, a presentation on an artist is art history class. We come up with the, hopefully, awesome presentation using our brains, yes, but in combination with books, notes, internet searches, and other people. I could argue that my brain took in all the information and produced the presentation, but the author of the text argues that my brain simply shoved off some of its responsibilities onto these other sources and the resulting presentation was a collaboration.

            The most awesome notion in the excerpt in my opinion is the part about the tabs. How cool would that be? To be able to find out where a book is in the building, who has been using it, how often it’s been used, and if it is in use at that moment! That would particularly come in handy for lost car keys! Much better than the “find it now” crap or the whistle or clap finder things that never work. If that isn’t awesome enough, add to that the ability of your house to detect activity in certain rooms and turn things on and off when your car is in proximity.  It’s like having a butler and a serious security system!

            All this thus mentioned has been non-invasive, all outside of the body. One of the implanted cyborg devises mentioned was an implant that sent data on heart function to the owner’s cell phone and in the event of a heart attack the phone would automatically call for help. The possibilities of technology in combination with the human body are endless and amazing.

               

oscillating circuit diagram