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Bay View Gallery Night

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2011-05-20

Bay View Gallery Night

Bay View Gallery Night is happening Friday, June 3rd, 2011, and you’re invited! That’s right… you’re invited (personally) by me, and the fine folks at Milwaukee Makerspace, as that’s where I’ll be showing off some of my weird intersections between art + technology.

I don’t want to ruin the surprise by telling you about the things I’ll have there, but it’s probably safe to say there will be at least one drawing machine, and one hands-on interactive piece that blends old-school analog art with the modern day digital world. I’m also hoping to capture people’s souls as well (with a camera anyway.)

Besides Milwaukee’s Makers, there will also be a number of local artists at the Makerspace, so if our crazy blend of art + technology is too much of a glimpse at a dystopian future for you, there will be plenty of pretty things to look at as well.

Oh, and if you head over to the Hide House, say “hi” to Mike Krukowski for me. He’ll be showing his photography there. Who else will you see that night? Check the list on Facebook.

I’m really excited to be doing this, because even though I don’t currently live in Bay View, I have lived there, and may again some day. Either way, it’s a pretty cool place, and I think having their own gallery night is pretty damn cool.

Tags art, makerspace, milwaukee, technology

Uncategorized

The Photo Booth

Last year I was invited to a co-worker’s wedding. And, since so many weddings nowadays involve being creative on a budget, they had a photo booth there that they set up themselves using Sparkbooth, a great little Adobe AIR-based application. A few weeks later we were having our annual work party, and I was tasked with making a photo booth a reality. Since then I’ve been working on building a better photo booth experience.

NOTE: Need a button? Now you can buy one! Visit our store or Etsy.

For the first one I set up, I used my MacBook Pro. We connected a Sony PD-150 video camera via FireWire and selected it in Sparkbooth rather than using the built-in iSight camera. (The iSight is a small camera, with a tiny lens, so the video camera ended up providing a better image.) We also put a little sticker on the space bar that said “PRESS HERE TO TAKE PHOTOS” and hoped for the best. It worked, but there were just too many moving parts to deal with, like the camera on a tripod behind the MacBook, and a light clamped onto the tripod. It wasn’t elegant.

The Sparkbooth software is great and provides a ton of features, including the ability to upload photos to Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr, Posterous, or a dozen other sites. There are some optional features that would require a keyboard—if you prompt people to enter their name, email, a comment, or choose if they want the image uploaded or not—but the main interaction is through pressing the space bar to start the picture-taking process.

If you need a space bar, you may need a keyboard… unless you build something that can emulate a space bar. When I saw The AWESOME Button on Make, I knew what I had to do. I had to build a button.

The Button

The button is simple, and built into a metal case. It should stand up to abuse that a normal keyboard might not, and it’s pretty simple. You can’t really press the wrong button, there’s only one.

Once I had the button, I set about getting my old iMac set up as the photo booth machine. Not being happy with the built-in iSight (the iMac is about 4 years old, and it’s definitely not as good as the latest round of iSight cameras), I ended up taking the Canon ZR800 from Time Lapse Bot and using that. It worked OK but wasn’t ideal. I didn’t want to have to deal with a tripod and more cables, etc. (I even ended up testing a floor-mount camera holder I built which took pictures of shoes for a specific event—don’t ask!)

Ultimately I settled on using a Logitech HD Pro USB Webcam C910. Its image quality is much better than the iSight, and there’s just one cable to plug in. Just one problem… while it worked fine with my MacBook, no matter what I tried, I could not select it in Sparkbooth on the iMac. I tried everything, including different versions of Adobe AIR, different versions of Mac OS X, reformatting the drive, a clean install… nothing would work. I ended up disconnecting the built-in iSight thanks to some help from iFixIt.

The Completed Photo Booth

So I now had the button and the camera. I then needed something to hold it all together. I wanted a stand to put the iMac on that was about the right height for a “typical human being,” and by that I mean: about my height. (You can also easily adjust the camera by just tilting the iMac a bit.) I ended up building a simple pedestal out of plywood and painting it white. I used thin plywood to save on weight since it needs to be somewhat portable. You can’t see it in the photo but the back has been left open, and there’s an internal shelf for the keyboard and mouse. I keep those handy in case of trouble, or if I need to change any settings in the software. The shelf actually helps structurally as well.

For the light, I used a small IKEA clamp light (you’d be amazed how hard it is to find a small, good-looking clamp light.) There’s an L-shaped piece of plywood behind the iMac that’s held onto the stand with a c-clamp. It works for now. I may upgrade the light in the future.

Photos from the Booth

Here’s a selection of photos from the first official use of the Photo Booth. (Yes, there are two Munchkins on the back wall—it was a “Wizard of Oz” themed party.) I’m asking for a bit of forgiveness in calling this a “Photo Booth” at this point because, while it does take photos, there isn’t an actual booth yet… I need to save something for Phase II of this project…

Stay Tuned!

NOTE: Need a button? Now you can buy one! Visit our store or Etsy.

Tags diy, imac, macbook, make, photobooth, sparkbooth, zr800

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Processing: HTTP Request

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2011-05-18

HTTP Request

I’ve been falling behind on Processing Month, but it’s not because I haven’t been hacking away, it’s because I’ve been hitting a lot of walls, not having things work out the way I want them to. I’m trying to not just take other people’s code and go from there, but trying my best to dig through the Processing documentation and reference and figure things out. Sometimes it works… Sometimes it doesn’t.

So that “138” you see above is not very exciting at all. I started working with pulling data from the web into Processing, with the thought that I’ll have a web application output data, that Processing pulls in, and then talks to an Arduino to do… something.

So right now there is a bit of PHP that looks like the following:

<?php echo "138" ?>

And in Processing when I call the println command it outputs this:

HTTP Request

And in draw() after we call the println command, we also call the text command which puts the “138” on the canvas.

I know… it’s fairly unexciting, but it’s a small step. Very small. I have a long way to go to get it working more reliably. Right now, we are reversing the output from the request, and grabbing the first line (index array zero) which should be the last line if we didn’t reverse it. I’m not too clear on array operations yet. (I come from the text processing world of Perl, so there’s a little culture shock in Processing.) Also, if the code outputs anything after the value, it doesn’t work. (I found this out when editing the file in nano, which seems to add an extra line at the end. Urgh)

/*
 * 20110518.pde
 */

import processing.net.*;

Client c;
String data;

void setup() {
  size(800, 600);
  background(0);
  stroke(255);
  c = new Client(this, "rasterweb.net", 80);
  c.write("GET /raster/processing/20110518.php HTTP/1.1\n");
  c.write("Host: rasterweb.net\n\n");
}

void draw() {
  
  if (c.available() > 0) {
    
    data = c.readString();
        
    println(data);
    
    String lines[] = reverse(split(data, "\n"));
    
    textAlign(CENTER);
    textSize(100);
    text(lines[0], width/2, height/2);
        
  }
}

The good news is, since I have been busy with Processing (and if all goes well) I’ll have a new interactive art piece to display at the Milwaukee Makerspace for Bay View Gallery Night.

Tags code, processing

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Makey Birthday!

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2011-05-18

Makey Birthday

Hey folks, it’s a month out from my birthday (June 18th is the day!) and while I typically appreciate the gifts people buy for me, this year I want to make a request, and it goes like this:

1. Make me something!

Yeah, you (together with your own two hands) should make me something. Chance are you’re creative in some way. Maybe you can knit, or draw, or paint, or write a poem or a short story, or compose a song, or take an amazing photo, or maybe you are good with tools, can work with wood, can weld, or cut paper and glue it together, or maybe you make things in the kitchen, like lovely cakes or pizza pies.

If you need some inspiration, check out some of the stuff they highlight on Make, or check out the Flickr photos in the Make or Craft pool. If you really don’t think you can make something yourself, Etsy has things that other people make.

2. Give me money.

Yeah, those are the choices. Either you make me something, or just give me money. (Any amount is fine.) Seriously. Don’t go to the store and buy some mass-produced consumer good. Just make me something, or give me money. How simple is that?

Note #1: In the event you give me money instead of making me something, the money will be used to procure things like food or gasoline.

Note #2: In the event that I get awesome handmade gifts from people, I’ll blog about them, as long as people give me permission to do so.

Tags birthday, make

Uncategorized

Simple Sandbags

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2011-05-17

Typically when we do larger video shoots we hire a grip truck, and the grip truck is loaded with stands, and scrims, and lots of sandbags. Mmmmm, sandbags!

The sandbags are pretty nice. Thick canvas with strong handles, and pretty darn heavy. Of course if you make your own sandbags you can make them smaller and lighter, or bigger and heavier. Customize them as you wish!

Here’s my recipe for simple sandbags:

Sand
Plastic bags
An old pair of pants
Cord

It’s pretty simple really. Take a plastic bag, and put some sand in it. Tie it shut. Put it inside another plastic bag. (Try to get all the air out of it if possible.)

Once you have the plastic bag the size and weight you desire, find an old pair of pants. Cut the legs off. Make sure they are long enough to fit the plastic bag into.

Slide the bag inside the pant leg, and tie up the ends with some cord. That’s it.

You could actually sew the ends shut, but then you need a sewing machine, and you need to know how to sew, and then these aren’t really “simple” sandbags anymore.

These also don’t have any handles, but again, we’ve kept it all pretty simple.

Your new sandbags are now ready to hold your stands down, weight down your dolly, or be used as a makeshift cinesaddle.

Tags diy, make, sandbags