IDEO Labs

I live in Logan Square in Chicago and have this glass block window in the front of my building.  Because I spend too much time with computers, every time I looked at the wall it seemed like a grid of pixels.  I had seen LED pixel walls before, but never ones that would let light through during the day.  I had been thinking about this challenge when I heard Mike Kuniavsky and Tod Kurt talk about the BlinkM modules that their company ThingM makes.  These modules seemed perfect, so I ordered 126 of them and set to work.

Because the wall is public facing I wanted to make it interactive, so as someone walks by it reacts to their movement. I couldn’t resist the idea of making a “bricks” style game out of bricks, so this was the first project.  The video below shows this game in progress.  I wanted to design it so as people walked by, they would control the paddle and would start to play the game without intending to.

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We have developed a small “shield” board for the Arduino Pro Mini that allows us to easily prototype small battery-powered devices that contain motors, lights, speakers or sensors.  This shield adds the following features to the arduino board:

• Battery charging of a lithium polymer or lithium ion battery
• Voltage converter of battery voltage to 3.3V.  This will regulate any voltage in the range of 1.8-5.5V to 3.3V.  Without this the things that are powered would get less power as the battery dies (i.e. the lights would dim, motors would run slower)
• 8 MOSFETs that allow I/O pins to control higher current loads.  The arduino can only source 40mA from a single pin.  This allows a pin to control up to 5A of current.  This is necessary for things like motors or large banks of LEDs

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As a going-away present for our intern Alex, an avid photographer, we decided to hack a toy camera.  Alex has an awesome signature hair cut, so we thought it would be funny to make a camera that prints his hair on all the portraits he takes.  The final design is super simple and only takes a little trial and error to get right.  We used a Diana, the plastic camera from the 60’s with a cult following.  It would also work with the newer Holga camera.

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