Monday, May 14, 2007

Two Weeks Left

Location:
I've got the OK from CSS to use Rm. 109 or 116 for Follow Your Heart! during 202's normal meeting time on the 29th. However, I can't confirm my use of either room yet, because I still need to run through an adequate test projection.

Short throw projection:
I am now grappling with the difficulty of getting my projection to cover the floor of a room with a relatively low ceiling. I found a not-yet-series of articles on the topic at http://digitalperformance.org/?p=133, which I wish were complete. I have marginalized, though not eliminated the possibility of tiling multiple projectors, instead feeling that constructing a DIY reflective mylar mirror or an assembly of pcv and dcv lenses will be the route I go. Neilsen Enterprises in Kent will be my source if I make a mirror.

Having checked out projectors over the weekend and experimented with putting available lenses in front of the non-removable projector lens (these being a magnifying glass and a educational children's playtoy consisting of a double-concave lens mounted in a big wooden handle), I went ahead and ordered several lenses from a optical supply company. I am sure that even with high quality lenses, there will be lot of image blurring, not to mention dimming. This is not so bad. Actually, it might even enhance the aesthetic of my program. Will it get the image to the correct throw ratio though? We'll see once the lenses come.

If the lense assembly does not work, I will have to do some speedy scouting of outdoor locations on campus to project at night. This would entail mounting the projector on the side of a building and using some corrective slant anamorphosis, either simply by keystoning, or by rewriting the program to to conform to a distorted cartesian grid, and finding a place with few walkway lamps.

The News From Fremont:
The circuit I am building to get the ticking of the polar HRM to the Arduino is running into diagnostic problems. This circuit consists of two stages, both of which are still on the breadboard: the preamp, to get the voltage to adequately use the range over 0-5V and the frequency filter, to let the Arduino just listen to the frequency band close to 5.1 KHz (the frequency the HRM clicks at). Right now, when I send voltage out to an audio cable, it seems to respond fine, but when I read the signal with a multimeter, the behavior doesn't seem at all reliable. This is frustrating. I am really hoping that I can get the HRM talking to the Arduino soon so that I can move on to more coding of my program.

4 comments:

jubruk said...

the idea of having your project projected outside somewhere sounds pretty awesome actually, especially at night when perception and sight is limited and skewed. hummm. i really like the overall simplicity of your project, it's one of those where people won't really what a huge amount of work/ complications went into but i think the impact/message will be easily understood- main goal right? good luck!

Kjell Hansen said...

Thanks! Yeah, the project development has so far been a pretty difficult/complicated realization of a minimal and pure premise. I definitely hope that my project's conceptual simplicity will support it's impact on the participant.

I thought about staging it outdoors at night early on in the project development and I too think that could contribute to the aesthetic of it a lot, but so far I've been planning for locations besides this option due to what I feel might be difficult logistics of mounting the projector and/or mirror, etc.

amburrr said...

thanks for the detailed feedback! it helps a lot

DK said...

good news on the rooms. While I also would love the idea of having the thing outside, that brings in a lot of new issues. I imagine the what is projected might be too faint.

Sorry to hear about the difficulties with the Arduino, perhaps email James?