Below is a small experiment I’m currently running; very informally I’m updating a pachube feed (‘cups of coffee today’) with the current location data. It’s a bit of an odd experiment – I’m not really always drinking coffee, but once I set it up (using the pachube iphone app, which is pretty simple to use) I discovered that it logged the location of each coffee cup consumed. Not so exciting I know, but I’m interested in the notion that my daily activities and movements can be logged, tracked in some sense and collected to form an image – be that automatically or manually logged data. It’s by no means new territory, but I’m keen to see how it all works out. There’s a chance that the ‘update feed by twitter’ tool will come in handy, but who knows at this point.
So as I said, It’s a bit of a mish-mash, however there are a few things of interest. 1. I can log 0 cups of coffee, which will update the location but keep my caffeine intake low. 2. When i do have a cup of coffee the daily tally will increase and I’ll be able to see where and when it all happens (at work, that’s a no brainer..). 3. Along comes this openstreetmap based project from the pachube apps page – Trails.Have a look for yourself, just how well or unwell my coffee consumption is going over the last 24 hours.. Hopefully, if you’re reading this you’ll see a map below, with a gps overlay of location (x,y) and consumption (z) data. If not, then perhaps I’ve not updated in a while. Nonetheless, it’s got me thinking about these new consumer (no pun intended) tools which are now readily available – and free.Not sure where this will go, not exactly sure where it belongs, but it’s worth mentioning at least.Drink up!
Tag Archive for ideas
pachube coffee and gps
fluid blobs
Linked below are some early results from a new series of sketches I’ve been working on using Processing. These sketches continue in a long line of projects I’ve completed recently using simple camera tracking algorithms to infer interesting patterns of movement in urban spaces.The first example is a calibrated blob tracking experiment, using the excellent and very well documented OpenCV library for processing. A few simple modifications to the setup parameters allow for a very customisable tool, able to withstand many of the constraints live webcam installs can throw up. I’ve tested this in a number of places (my bedroom wall, lit by a single lamp tends to be the best contrast) and will have more to say on the nature of live webcam video in the future.
OpenCV blob tracking – calibrated from Jason McDermott on Vimeo.
The second example is a first attempt at combining the live blob tracking with the wonderfully funky and playful MSA Fluid library also for processing. This lib is geared towards touch screen interfaces and screen based mouse interactivity – but I immediately thought it would be the perfect partner for my webcam based projects (or even accelerometer/phidget/slider/midi sensor data). It wasn’t very difficult to swap out the mousex/pmousex variables for centroid x/y data, so the first test has been deemed a success. I showed this yesterday to Frank/Ale/Amy/george/anyone who would stop for more than 2 minutes in the interactivation studio and it was a big hit 
OpenCV + MSA Fluid (Processing) from Jason McDermott on Vimeo.
The third example is significant for a couple of reasons – it is another combination this time using recorded video of an actual installation space (filtration fields / DAB courtyard) thus requiring another version of the calibration – but also my first experiments in putting together an arrayed interface between the blobs and the fluid.To explain further; Firstly it’s easy to switch out the mouse for ‘something else’ and inferring movement velocity for a single object/blob is simple. Secondly I wasn’t so sure about the way to apply this singular blob mousex/pmousex-esque technique to many objects at once. Thirdly I wasn’t sure if it would all explode in one big fluorescent, particle mess!
OpenCV + MSA Fluid (processing) test 3 from Jason McDermott on Vimeo.
[Update]< <note, v3 will be embedded when vimeo uploads my video. since when does a new video have to wait in a queue for 30 minutes??>>In the end I’d say it’s mission accomplished, certainly with calibration tweaks to occur before I’m happy to unleash this on an unsuspecting public. I’d be interested to see how this could influence peoples’ behaviour in the space – whether or not we would see people dancing/swimming/painting the space of the courtyard. I’m curious also to see how this kind of new interaction with the space of the DAB could filter into a new perception of the building as not merely a space to move through but one which is open to new forms of physical conversation.
Related Posts:
The Street as Platform
The Street as platform – a street rendered in data.
November has been a busy month! Along with Anthony Burke, Dan Hill and Mitchell Whitelaw, I’ve been running an intensive masterclass studio in the Master of Digital Architecture program at UTS. The masterclass is based on one of Dan’s earlier posts called The Street as Platform, in which the notion of the static street in contemporary urban planning and architecture is discussed as an anachronistic idea and one in dire need of reform. The street as platform talks about the dynamically linked nature of the modern street, where mobile communication, ubiquitous computing and traditional number crunching merge as a new kind of informational street ecology that exists just outside of our normal consciousness.As students and teachers of architecture, it could well be said that the dynamism of the street in it’s inhabitation and occupation is implicitly known and explored, but never clearly articulated as a driver – in it’s own right – of architectural decision making regarding form/content.
With this in mind, we set out to investigate the lived inhabitation of the street in an attempt to visualise and understand the hidden seams of activity, an attempt to make the invisible visible.Along with Dan, Anthony and Mitchell, we had a selection of super keen students and a handful of sensor equipment with we set about taming the data beast of Harris St. Our aim was to produce some meaningful information, based on corellated data sets gleaned and generated from our surrounds. The students searched for data on Harris st from a number of sources relative to Harris St (google, flickr, youtube, newsrolls, blogs) and then used processing to scrape, munge and visualise the data. Also included into the mix were a number of sensors we wired up to collect site specific data such as light/temperature/humidity/rainfall levels over the last week, Bluetooth devices in the vicinity, webcam images from the street as well as audio readings and a magnetic sensor.
All up the live data feeds were a bit of a mixed bag with plenty of teething problems, but over the next fortnight these issues will look to be sorted.The students presented their work on Friday to an invited panel including marcus trimble, andrew vande moere and kirsty beilharz, one of our new professors in Design at UTS. The presentations went very well, showcasing some very good work and sparking much discussion amongst the invited guests.The students have diligently been updating a blog with images of the process workand sketch ideas throughout the last two weeks, which can be found at http://streetasplatform.wordpress.com. The studio will be exhibiting some of the work at the upcoming UTS Architecture exhbition on the 4th December, so come see some of the live feeds being visualised on the night.
See also; http://offshorestudio.net/ http://cityofsound.com/ http://theteemingvoid.com/
Related Posts:
google bot v2
This is the second post for testing the google spider bots.The link below does not contain any of my original work, it is merely to test the google OCR bots..we’ll see how it goes.http://www.jasonmcdermott.net%2F%7Ehome%2Fpdf%2F11231_martinscopic.pdf
Related Posts:
motion graphs
The google-verse has recently been expanded to include gapminder software as part of the ever impressive Google Docs platform.Below is an interactive spreadsheet example of the sophisticated motion graphs now available in Google Docs.The motion graph is based on the Gapminder software first demonstrated to the world by Hans Rosling in his exciting and highly memorable TED Talk presentations (2006 and 2007). I first noticed gapminder in march this year, and I’m very pleased to see how far it has come in the last 6-12 months.(html) Gapminder Graph;According to Gapminder.org, the motion graphs have been ported to become a new inclusion to the Google docs spreadsheet tool, and as you can see can be leveraged **very** easily for all kinds of shared data storage and visualisation. The data included in the graph is the boilerplate standard detail that comes with the gadget as a means of demonstrating it’s capabilities, and it seems to be a very compelling example of where collaborative work involving data sharing/massaging/viewing is heading. Hans makes the claim in his 2007 TED talk that the UN databases for statistical data have been opened up to the software and will be searchable in some form. As the presentations illustrate, it’s not only the capability of the software, but also the depth and accessibility of the source data that is moving at a remarkable rate.(html) Google Doc Example;For the record, the steps involved in going from 0 to google motion-graphed are as follows;i. sign up for free google account,ii. click the docs link on the homepage,iii. click new spreadsheet or upload an existing file,iv. select cells, click insert new motion graph gadgetv. publish as a webpage, share with friends/colleagues etc.voila!Last year when I was completing my architecture dissertation project, myself and a few other students were researching living conditions and economic data in countries external to Australia. Gapminder was a discovery made far too late to be of use to that project, but I’m certain that this kind of data empowerment is only going to facilitate knowledge or information distribution between on a local and global scale simultaneously.closing thoughts;i. Hans makes the comment that the $100 computer will be of integral value to impoverished and developing families. One only has to imagine the kind of super-users that could emerge using nothing more than cheap hardware, fluid access to the internet and freely distributed open source software.ii. I’ll be using the motion charts to interact with the household budget – sharing bills between 5 people can be tricky. I’ll post more on this topic when the tools have been tested.
