The end of the semester at ITP always brings interesting projects I haven’t yet seen, which is one of the things that makes working there so much fun. I am a sucker for good lighting projects, and this year’s class featured some really nice ones. Here are a few from this spring’s crop:

Avery Max’ Neon God is a giant El-wire mirror driven by two Arduino Unos. Here’s a prototype video, and here’s Avery with the final wall. If you like rainbow sparkle psychedelia, you’re gonna love Avery’s work in general.

Avery Max with Neon God

Sukmo Koo’s Hand in Hand is a lamp that requires friends to join hands in order to light up. In his final presentation at ITP, Koo managed to get the entire room, and his thesis advisor, all joining hands:

Sukmo Koo's Hand in Hand

Geetha Padapati’s Sunlight as Mediated By an Object is a lightbox driven by a camera focused on the sky above her apartment. UUsing Adafruit’s LDP8806 RGB Lightstrip and an Arduino, she created a beautiful abstraction of the subtle changes in skylight.

Sunlight As Mediated by an Object (images courtesy Geetha Padapati)

Emily Webster’s Cellar Door seeks to liven up the ubiquitous sidewalk cellar doors of Manhattan by lighting them from within. Force sensors beneath a sheet of structural plexiglas are tied to an Arduino that controls the halogen lights that light up the entrance and allow pedestrians to stroll over and peek inside.

Emily Webster's Cellar Door lights up the sidewalk (image courtesy Emily Webster)

The lighting project are only a tiny portion of the great work students did this semester; I’ll hopefully post about a few others in the coming days. Meantime, if you want to see them all, check out the ITP Spring Show 2012 site.

John Edgar Park has developed a funny project:  a fully functional Arduino that is about six times larger than real life.

Will be presented at Maker Faire 2012.

Read John’s original post.

Coder Matt Bell is continuing to improve his exceedingly clever water-based display screen.

Inspired by a Jeep display that spelled out words with falling water, Bell’s design consists of a water tank connected to a grid of clear plastic tubes and an Arduino. Individual solenoid valves at the bottom of each tube can let in air, creating the effect of individual white pixels on a black screen, and preprogrammed sequences can spell out letters or numbers. His newest version adds an air reservoir to control the size of the bubbles, as well as completely separate vinyl tubes rather than one large tank with dividers.

More about the build-instructions and inspiration can be read here and here.

Via:[TheVerge]

So, you want a DIY printer, but you have no idea to print the intricate squiggly design on the board? Enter Pensa!

In the maker’s own words:

But there are times when we need to output lines in space rather than volumes. Most 3D printing technologies are not well suited for printing thin lines because the materials are weak, the machine uses a lot of 3D-print support material, and the process is slow. The closest thing to a machine that can output lines is a CNC wire bender, but these machines are used almost exclusively for mass production in factories. They are not used for rapid prototyping because the equipment is large, expensive and takes trained personnel to run. So, we decided to make the DIWire Bender.

Apart from a mere prototype, the machine can read any data. A few desired applications can be : artwork from a random number algorithm, or internet data like stock prices and weather stats. You can also create mass customized products, like eyeglass frames that fit, or be a street vendor printing jewelry from a person’s silhouette, on demand.

And it doesn’t have to be aluminum wire; in principal the machine could bend other materials, including colored electrical wires, some plastics, memory metals, even light pipes to create small light forms. And if you don’t like the output, it could be configured to pass the bent wire through the straightener to start again.

Have fun!

Via:[Pensanyc]

3D image input is often a challenging task when it comes to irregular objects like a human body. Here is where an arduino, tilt sensors and a little math comes to the rescue. University of Toronto’s Responsive Architecture at Daniels school created one such blanket.

The petals are made up of a conductive material, which are linked to larger network of conductive threads all in the shape of a hexagon. The loads of tilt sensors send the data of their position with respect to a central Arduino-powered computer which is then able to calculate the slopes between the various flowers and petals on the blanket. Thereby giving out a 3D input to the computer.

The concept will be widely applicable to interaction design, video game controls and numerous other fields.

Via:[Gizmodo, University of toronto - RAD]

Get a little more adventurous and play with fire. Feel like a true rockstar complete with guitar (hero) and flames!

Here are the complete instructions to build one for yourself.

Via[HacknMod]

Ever fancied making your own musical instrument? Or better, cooking your own musical instrument? Two students in their final year at Les Ateliers French National Institute for Design created this amazing musical project using gelatin, called – Noisy Jelly. When the jelly is stroked, it produces sounds of different patterns.

Variations of shapes and salt concentration, plus the strength of finger contact, determine the audio signals that result. Once created, the jellies are placed on top of the game board, which is a capacitive sensor connected to an arduino that translates the interaction into sound.

The highlight of this piece of art is the visualization of electric signals in the form of theremin-like noises.

Via[Popsci]

The Twittertape Machine prototype from Adam Vaughan connects to his Twitter account via Ethernet, checks for updates twice every minute, and prints out a hard copy of any new Tweets without the need for printer ink.

Vaughan told us that the idea for the Twittertape Machine was born of a desire to have the kind of old stock ticker seen in movies sitting on his desk. After a lukewarm reception to his pitch from friends, he decided to make his dream a reality. Rather than sacrifice a rare original (like the Edison Universal Stock Ticker used for Ames Bielenberg’s Spring Break project), he opted to build his own replica version from some old brass clock movements, a wooden plinth and a glass dome found online.

It is powered by two AC adapters and is controlled by a network-enabled Arduino-style microcontroller running custom code in the base. The board checks Vaughan’s Twitter account every 30 seconds for new Tweets.

The little thermal printer hidden at the base prints the tweets on a cut-down thermal paper. An awesome product in an awesome demand!

[Via: Twittertape and Gizmag]

How to become YouTube from Thechnocrat on Vimeo.

It may be on a T shirt or it may be on a bag, either way it will look awesome! A simple DIY weekend art using your arduino and a few more common components.

Using an Arduino, a 9-volt battery, and eight ping-pong balls with a white LED inserted into each one, the ring of dots lights up in sequence, endlessly chasing its tail waiting for a non-existant video to load. A giant F5 refresh button would have really completed the costume, though, since that’s everyone’s secret weapon for getting a YouTube clip to finally load.

[Via:Hackaday and Gizmodo]