Author: jchen693

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Project Post #5 – Velcro MIDI Jacket

Project Post 5

Project Title

Velcro MIDI Jacket

Project Team

Junda Chen, Jeff Ma, Yudong Huang, William Black

Weekly Accomplishments

Note

  • Accomplished item: item
  • Major responsible men: (man1, man2, …)

List

  • 3D Print Leap Motion case
    • Printed the model in Makerspace (Jeff, Yudong)
    • Integrate Leap  motion on jacket (Jeff, Yudong)
  • Theremin Software
    • Run on Raspberry Pi 3+ (Have a big trouble with Raspberry PI) (Junda, Jeff)
    • Java script to experiment/benchmark (Junda, William)
    • Python script to experiment/benchmark (Junda, William)
  • Jacket
    • Select and buy Velcro (Yudong, Jeff, William)
    • Select (and buy) a jacket. (Yudong, Jeff)
    • Integrate Velcro on Jacket (Yudong)
    • Re-Design the light effect of the jacket (Yudong, Jeff)

Image/Video

Figure 1. Velcro Jacket design. We attach the velcro to jacket and it looks like this. We will try to integrate it on the velcro if possible this week.

Figure 2,3. Leap Motion case. Using PVA we printed the case of Leap Motion, polished it and tried it on body. It seems great : )

Material list

  • Circuit Board: (Potentially) MIDI encode/decoder, Leap motion image processor,
    • Arduion (1):
    • Circuit Playground (1)22
    • Raspberry Pi 3B + (1, with toolkits): $30-50
  • Leap Motion (1): $96
  • LED Strip light (2, TBD)
  • Black velcro fabric (we have in the studio)
  • A Jacket (1, TBD)
  • (Safe) Infrared LED (20)
  • Long USB cable (x2) (for emergency and design)

 

Areas of Concern

  • Raspberry Pi Power Supply and Performance: We have a big headache. These are the approaches we tried to do — we might need some help
    • Change a PI — it’s on its way from Amazon.
    • Check Power Supply. — we tried to use Michael’s power adaptor (official), Mike’s  power adaptor (5V 2.4A), Mike’s roommate’s power adaptor (5V 2.5A and 9V 4A). None of them work. Our speculation is: the PI works, but the kernel might not be able to boot because of reason other than power adaptor (see below).
    • Check SD card image. — we tried the combination of the following methods — it does not work by far.
      • Change image (all newest from the official download website: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/)
        • Noobs
        • Raspbien
        • Snappy Ubuntu kernel
        • Ubuntu Mate kernel
      • Change SD card format
        • FAT32: especially for TF card larger than 32G (https://www.sdcard.org/developers/overview/capacity/)
        • exFAT
      • Change TF card
        • Sony Micro TF 128G (Mike’s card — might be too large, but was bootable when using FAT32)
        • Samsum TF 32G
  • User Experience: How to let our users know how to operate without a screen?

 

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Project Post #4 – Velcro MIDI Jacket

Project Post 4

Project Title

Velcro MIDI Jacket

Project Team

Junda Chen, Jeff Ma, Yudong Huang, William Black

Weekly Accomplishments

Note — This is an accomplished item: item

  • 3D Print Leap Motion case
  • Theremn Software
    • Motion trace: proximity and height change
    • Data Transfer
    • Theremin instrumental voice
    • (Optimize) Range Detection
      • Test how many Infra-ray LEDs are sufficient to optimize detection
        • on wrist
        • on Jacket
    • (Optimize) Position to put the Leap Motion on the Jacket
      • Waist band — with a tiled case the effect is good.
    • Run on Arduino (Don’t have to run on Arduino)
    • Run on Raspberry Pi 3+
  • Leap Motion Optimization
    • Add an infrared light source to
    • Determine where the light should be
      • On Jacket
  • User Experience Design: Tune the software to let user make sense of how to use it.
  • Jacket
    • Select a light
    • Select a material for diffusion
      • Sheer from underneath
    • Design the jacket: Finally Decide on Velcro Hoodie !!!!
      • Velcro Hoodie? — Have all the things in the velcro and stick waistband to the velcro on the Hoodie.
    • Select (and buy) a jacket.
    • Re-Design the light effect of the jacket

Image/Video

(Figure 1,2): Two implementations of light

(Figure 3): Current design using Velcro. This is a remarkable shift in our project development. To solve the conflict between the freedom of light design and the constrain of other hardware devices, we proposed the use of Velcro to decomposite the design of hardward components (on the waist band) and the design of light (on the jacket). From now, all the hardward-related design will be presented on the waistband, which can be attach/detach to the jacket using the Velcro. The light on jacket is also configurable using Velcro, and can be connected to the waistband for power supply.

 

 

Material list

  • Circuit Board: (Potentially) MIDI encode/decoder, Leap motion image processor,
  • Leap Motion (1): $96
  • LED Strip light (2, TBD)
  • Black velcro fabric (we have in the studio)
  • A Jacket (1, TBD)
  • (Safe) Infrared LED (20)
  • Long USB cable (x2) (for emergency and design)

 

Areas of Concern

  • Infrared LED Safety to eye: To design a better tracking of hand while not directly influence users’ eye is a design challenge, and that might require some research in the area.
    • With the current LED model, it is basically safe to the eye with all the possible implementations we want to make.
  • Raspberry Pi Power Supply and Performance: Have to benchmark on the Raspberry Pi how well the theremin work with external power supply. The fall-back for this project is to directly connect all things back to a MacBook.
  • User Experience: How to let our users know how to operate without a screen?

 

 

Past Development Log

Cylon.js: an Arduino API to control the leap motion

Adafruit strip LED : a $17.99

Leap Motion installation: Troubleshooting in Windows.

 

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Project Post #2 – Theremin Jacket

Project Post 2

@Postdate: Mar 9th (Sat)

Project Title

Theremin Jacket

Project Team

Junda Chen, Jeff Ma, Yudong Huang, William Black

Major aspects for Development

  • Sensor

    • Sonar Sensor

    • Leap Motion

  • Arduino/Other interface & Software Design

    • MIDI Software

    • Storage

    • Data Transfer

  • Clothes Design

    • Sensor/Leapmotion embedding

    • Light Design

      • LED

      • Covering Material / Defussing material (Potentially)

    • Jacket

Weekly Accomplishments

  • Setup sonar sensor tracking in Arduino Mega.
  • Use sonar sensor to build a prototypical MIDI device.
  • Leap Motion Mechanism
    • How leap motion works, Accuracy, General application
    • HW and SW. Compatilibility to IoT Devicess
  • 3D PrintLeap Motion case
  • First software prototype for theremin
    • Motion trace: proximity and height change
    • Data Transfer and MIDI encode/decode
    • Run on Arduino/Raspberry pi
    • (Optimization) De-noise.
  • Select a jacket.
  • Design the jacket.

Image/Video

Changes to our approach

We originally want to design the primitive circuit and sensors to make the sensing work. William has just worked out the sonar in wednesday, and as a backup plan and primitive approach we will design a theremin using the sonar sensors and integrate it as a part of jacket.

In search for potential improvement of gesture recognition, we also focus our attention on Leap Motion. On leap motion, we’re able to capture richer and more sensive gesture information — able to grab, tremble, drastically move up and down, within its well-defined range of service.

Material list

  • Circuit Board: (Potentially) MIDI encode/decoder, Leap motion image processor,
  • Leap Motion (1): $96
  • LED Strip light (2, TBD)
  • A Jacket (1, TBD)

Development Log

Cylon.js: an arduino API to control the leap motion

Adafruit strip LED : a $17.99

Leap Motion installation: Trouble shooting in Windows.

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Project Pitch – Junda Chen

Musical Jacket

Summary

Musical Jacket that allows musician to freely play and record music is an attractive idea for me. For now I envision a realistic implementation that support the record, play and output of the music by MIDI keyboard-like structure attached on the front of the jacket.

I am open to idea that related to other idea under category “aesthetic, conceptual, data driven/AI, musical”. I think the musical jacket, though not a brand new idea, is quite useful and straight forward to implement (at least as it seems to be right now). I would therefore love to connect to other ideas that could make the jacket more pragmatic and aesthetic.

Slides for introduction