Category Archives: making things

Take me to the river

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Via Bruce S comes this very nice ubicomp project.

Amphibious Architecture submerges ubiquitous computing into the water—that 90% of the Earth’s inhabitable volume that envelops New York City but remains under-explored and under-engaged. Two networks of floating interactive tubes, installed at sites in the East River and the Bronx River, house a range of sensors below water and an array of lights above water. The sensors monitor water quality, presence of fish, and human interest in the river ecosystem. The lights respond to the sensors and create feedback loops between humans, fish, and their shared environment. An SMS interface allows citizens to text-message the fish, to receive real-time information about the river, and to contribute to a display of collective interest in the environment. *

AMPHIBIOUS_2-web

Fish Sensor from xDesign Project on Vimeo.

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Also – augmented reality seems poised for a big takeoff – at least buzz-wise. I’ve been seeing AR posts everywhere (especially on Bruce S’s blog); like ubicomp, AR makes info in one’s surroundings more accessible. Maybe spoken word:writing::5 senses:augmented reality?

Project updates

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A quick status check on some of the irons I have in the fire.

  • The brackish tank is doing well. I’ve managed to persuade the archerfish to take Arowana Sticks in addition to crickets, so feeding is a lot easier. The scat will eat anything, but loves the sticks too. With summer and increased insolation, I’ve had some trouble with green water (single cell algae free-floating in the water column) – increasing the frequency of water changes has helped and I’m awaiting the delivery of  some Corbicula fluminea. I’m hoping that filter feeders in the tank will consume the last of the free algae. I’m growing out some black mangroves (Avicennia germinans) that Hydrophyte sent me (along with some other aquatic/emergent plants in an awesome care package) – not sure yet how I’m going to integrate the blackies into the brackish tank, but I have time to ponder while the mangroves embiggen.
  • Plants in the African stream tank have gotten over transplant shock. All the Anubias are sending out new roots, the Bollbitis are fiddleheading and the Java moss is sending out new growth as well.
  • The frog rack is fully populated. I moved my new banded leucs out of their quarantine tank into the middle level viv. They are quite shy; I’m hoping they get bolder as they get used to their new home and as the tank grows in and provides more cover.
  • The Mediated Toybee Tile project keeps simmering. Adhesive testing is pretty much done, though we may want to run some additional tests with this stuff (or just use it, give how nicely plain ol’ 5-minute stuff performed). I need to touch base with JY and CT and talk next steps as regards tile fabrication.

Ephemeral project – over and done with – baking with cherries from my little tree.

Hydroaeroplane – Patent #1,307,318

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On a recent tour of an incredible basement and barn collection, I was shown this – a patent model constructed around 1918, in support of a patent for a flying sub.

Further objects of the invention are to provide a hydro-aeroplane which admits of the wings or supporting planes being readily moved into and locked in operative position when the craft is to be used as an airship, or to be swung rearwardly into an out of the way position against the hull of the craft when the device is to be operated as a marine vessel, which provides effective means for propelling the craft through the water as well as through the air, which may be equipped with torpedo tubes and used for the discharge of torpedoes while submerged, and which is at all times under the perfect control of the operators. *

US1307318-0

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Irwin Allen, you’ve got nothing on Mr. Hans Christian Petersen of Ludington, Michigan – though your creation is much swoopier.

flyingsub

For more on the history of patent models there’s this story from the NYT and the history page at the Rothschild Petersen Patent Model Museum (the Museum will soon be added to Atlas Obscura by yr humble correspondent). And yes, that’s an Isetta in the background.

Resurrect dead on planet Jupiter

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Nearly all the credit for this little project should go to John Young and Chris Thompson – a month or so ago they posted some pictures of a linoleum QR Code to Flickr and I started thinking…  John and Chris’ intent, I believe, is to place QR Code tiles around their stomping grounds and link them – via John’s p8tch redirection server – to local info. My idea was less useful – useless, even – and goofily self-referential. First, two definitions:

QR Codes – a matrix code or two dimensional bar code. QR Codes are big in Japan; they’re used to feed URLs to cell phones.

Toynbee Tiles – “are messages of mysterious origin found embedded in asphalt in about two dozen major cities in the United States and three South American capitals.” *

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My idea:

With Chris’ help, make some QR Code Toynbee tiles and deploy them here and there (if I can get this going, I’ll be looking for tile droppers world wide). When and if someone scans the tile, they are taken to a web site where they are presented with a random image of a real Toynbee Tile. Not only would it be a cool bauble, it would also bring together a couple threads I’ve been thinking about – the almost unnoticed human extension via gadgets that’s happening ever more quickly and the slightly slower machine info embedding that’s rolling out here and there.

The web site – mtoynbee.com – is up and running. The ‘m’ stands for mediated or meta or messed-up or whatever else you care to force fit. You can click on the picture of the tile to access the blog where I’m stashing more info – n.b. – the QR Code post is sticky (at least for now); it will stay on top and the most recent post will be directly below it. The current sub-project is adhesive testing; the QRCode Toynbee Tiles need to stay intact and well-aligned. We humans, with our great pattern recognition skills, can pull meaning out of a tile that’s pretty bunged up – bar code scanners are nowhere near as good.

I’ll post little updates here, pointing over to the Mediated Toynbee blog, when we hit milestones.

mtoynbeecom_lg

Busy, busy

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I’ve been doing a lot of vivarium work – I plan on posting construction details within a month.

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And quite a bit of dog training – Dinah’s retrieve work is coming along.

Additionally some (heterogeneous) reading:

Categorize this, NSA!

In the on deck circle – refreshing my soldering skills (is it true that US English is the only variant not to pronounce the ‘l’?). Component to printed circuit board soldering, that is.

Patent Number 2,292,387

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Long-time readers of my blog know that I’m fascinated by Hedy Lamarr (originally – Hedwig Kiesler). In honor of Ada Lovelace Day (today!) I though I’d post a short run-down of the patent she and her collaborator, composer and pianist George Antheil,  filed in 1942. The title on the patent was “Secret Communication System” and it outlines a way to radio-control a torpedo in a way that makes jamming very difficult. The scheme the movie star and the composer came up with is what later came to be know as frequency-hopping spread spectrum. Wikipedia says, succinctly:

Frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) is a method of transmitting radio signals by rapidly switching a carrier among many frequency channels, using a pseudorandom sequence known to both transmitter and receiver. *

If you’re camped on one frequency while trying to transmit control info to your torpedo, you’re a sitting duck – your signal can be swamped by a transmitter on your target. If you are hopping from frequency to frequency in a way that your adversary can’t predict, but the receiver in the torpedo can, you’re in much better shape.

The mechanism K and A used to sync the transmitter and the receiver was one that had been used to control musical instruments and would be used a couple decades later to load programs on computers – paper tape!

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An interesting wrinkle – based on the tape above, I gotta believe that the frequency change interval is variable – perfectly understandable, given the one-to-one communication; it’s also a feature that would make an adversary’s job tougher.

Keeping the 2 tapes – one on the warship with the transmitter and one on the torpedo with the receiver – synchronized is essential.

Clearly the rolls have to start up at exactly the same time. In the invention each roll has an extra track and in that track is just one perforation inserted as a start marker. When the system was first armed (switched on), a little pin passed through this start perforation, restraining the roll from playing. The two pins were operated by an electromagnet, one at the ship end and one at the torpedo end. when the two electromagnets were switched on, that is when the device was armed, the pins appeared and were used to hold back the rolls. The electromagnets were connected together by two wires that ran from the ship’s transmitter equipment to the torpedo’s receiver. Once the torpedo was fired, the wires broke, breaking the circuit that operated the electromagnets, the two pins that held the roll withdrew and the rolls started playing at exactly the same instant… *

Additionally, they have to run at the same speed – not quite as big a trick as starting the run at exactly the same time.

It’s an excellent idea – perhaps a bit ahead of its time, but feasible (I think) given the tech of the day. It didn’t go anywhere though. Why? Two thoughts come to mind. The obvious explanation is that Kiesler and Antheil were outsiders. I can hear it now, “A movie star and a guy who writes ‘modern’ music have an idea for a torpedo remote control system? Haw, haw – tell me another.” Less obvious is an objection that may not have been apparent to Hedy. Hedwig Kiesler’s first marriage was to Friedrich Mandl, an Austrian arms dealer and manufacturer. The Germans were pioneers of electrically propelled torpedoes – Hedy may have heard discussion of them before her escape from Mandl and Austria in 1937. The problem was that the US used torpedoes powered by compressed air – no source of electricity to power the receiver.

In the overall scheme of things though, she and Antheil had a great idea – cheers, Hedy!

Patches, I'm depending on you, son…

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Two items of note.

My Nerd Commando P8tches arrove yesterday:

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A fun and interesting bit of work – well done John “Tikaro” Young and Kenn “Wappenbee” Munk! I understand the Japanese are way ahead of us in the ‘point your cell phone at a barcode and get info’ race (we in the US lag in most cell apps, it seems); I’m counting this as continuing to get my feet wet with ubicomp.

Via my Fickr contacts feed, a great patch designed by Gi for Esther Dyson. Dyson is in Star City training as a backup cosmonaut.

The design:

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Realized:

Huzzah, Gi!