Magic Potion
The Challenge
The prompt for the Student Design Challenge for the 8th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI - 2014) in Munich, Germany, asked to design an artifact, system, or experience around the topic of Magic.
As an answer to that, we created an Interactive Installation using the capabilities of Internet of Things, Physical, and Tangible Computing which transforms your day to day objects interactive musical instruments.
The Concept
We wanted to create an experience where your day to day objects come to life and you can interact with them.
The idea is that you drink a magic potion which brings your day to day object to life. As you touch them, they emit light and a music note. You can catch that music note and its light and store it in a jar. As the jar gets filled with notes you can pick up the jar and pour the notes you've stored in it on a waterfall where the stored notes are played and a song is made.
How it Works
The Potion bottle, all the objects and the jar are all connected to the arduinos. All the arduinos are connected to the computer using the internet. The computer has a Kinect connected to it.
The computer runs a server program in processing which also detects the users using the Kinect. All the arduinos run the client program which connects to the server.
As one drinks the potion, the tilt sensor in the potion bottle activates the touch capability in every object. Every single object is a capacitive touch sensor connected to an arduino. It detects when anyone touches the object and sends a signal to the server which results in playing the note.
Using the Kinect the user can grab the note while touching and object and doing a throw gesture towards the jar will send signal to the jar which stores the note in the form of the light representing the note in the jar.
Once the jar is filled with notes, the user can pour the water already in the jar on the waterfall. The waterfall has a water sensor, which on detecting water contact plays the notes stored in the jar.
In reality, the notes are actually stored on the server side and are just represented on the jar in the form of lights. All the notes are played on the computer.
Result
Our team was one of the top 10 finalist for the Student Design Challenge in 8th International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI - 2014) in Munich, Germany. We did an on stage performance in the conference and got a lot of accolades. We learned how to do a working implementation of Internet of Things using Arduinos.
Lessons Learned
I learned that the prototype should be rigorously tested and made robust to eliminate all chances of failure. Capacitive touch sensors behave in an unpredictable way when the arduino is powered on a battery. Our prototype failed on stage, but we didn't lose faith and kept trying till it worked. Never give up.
My Contribution
I created initial concept sketches and made the concept scenario. I made a functional prototype using Arduino, Kinect, OpenNI, and Processing.