Feral Robots Blog

SCOTT BURNHAM is the creative director of Montreal’s Biennial (2009). He is working with Droog on Urban Play:

“Urban Play is designed to take back the street… to give us the tools that let us install ourselves, our friends, our families, our games and our desires in what should be the space we all own collectively. Urban Play is the most promising experiment in not urban design, but designing the urban I […]

Throughout almost every major city in the world, individuals are taking it upon themselves to change their cities in ways that make them more creative, interactive, personal and fun. From small interventions such as a series of stickers that turn the London Underground’s Northern Line map into an interactive game to bold projects that transform chain-link fences in Chicago into public message boards, these actions fall outside of traditional notions of urban activity, and are quickly relegated to the margins, often labeled as subversive, underground, or even illegal.

Urban Play is an international project that believes this street-level inventiveness, energy and innovation is a window into a new form of creativity in the city. Launching in Amsterdam in 2008, …

Videos of the newest feral dogs ….

Chemhound:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=YjkHFKNUWbQ

Electrogirls:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=xeBQ1uejveY

I uploaded the files but forgot to post them in the blog!

The code for the Wiring board can be found here: http://xdesign.ucsd.edu/feralrobots/idogblog/bean_wiring/
And the Processing code and song can be found here: http://xdesign.ucsd.edu/feralrobots/idogblog/bean_processing/

Yay for a great project! )

Download file

Here’s the dog tag for the robot. It’s web optimized so the images are slightly blurry when viewed at higher than 100% magnification (a non-optimized version will be e-mailed in the next few minutes).

Dog Tag

ChemHound demo Friday–Derek Lomas will capture live action video!!
Upload your DogTag here!!
Please ensure that your final deliverable is also emailed.
Kev thanks for your thoughts and constructive criticism of the class. More on this coming

I spent the better part of 10 hours working at the lab today, Thursday the 23rd, working with my entire class of five on dogs, dog tags, wiring, and assembly. It was a long day, but in the end we got next to everything completed. Here’s how it went.

I arrived at the lab at 11:30. The very first thing I got accomplished was solder the sensor together. Readouts were very well and consistant, hanging below one volt when exposed to alchohol at common air levels, then it would peak to four or more volts when it came in contact with a potent alchohol source at close range. We found that the sensor took roughly a whole minute to stablize the readings before it was fit to sense – a very important note for our wiring (details below).

I grabbed a lunch and drink afterwards. Then we discussed the methodology of hooking up the equipment to the wiring board. It turns out that it is okay to solder wires directly to the pins of the board. The schematic would be very simple, far simpler than what the board is capable of doing. In short, we would program the board so that the …

we tested our sensor (TGS 822) again today and the circuit is working well. we used a dry erase marker as our ethanol source and the voltage reading gradually increases as the pen got closer to the sensor. now, time to work on the wiring board!

1) Email and Upload Dog Tags to your blog by end of scheduled exam time (6pm)
2) Demo Dogs on Video: present your dog as an “advertisement” for the upgrade.
Old dog, New Tricks : you are convincing others why they should try to upgrade.
Show dog tricks!

please leave your dog in the lab, for closer examination.
+ with feeding and care instructions (i.e. power up instructions)
+ with dog tag hardcopy

After several days of panic attacks, the wiring boards just came on my doorstep on Monday afternoon. One worry down. Now what do I do!? The board itself is pretty intimidating. All these pins sticking out of it and no clue how it’s going to be attached onto our robots, our sensors. Whatever!

Michael and I went through the sensor again. With the help of my electrical engineering roommates they were able to deduce and simplify the hookup for the TGS822 Figaro sensor. We got it working. So that’s good and through.

Without a servo, and without the sensor we really wanted, we kind of have no choice but to turn our dog into yet another breathalizer. Abandon the truck as transportation idea because DC motors don’t work well with the board (oh well) and just focus on getting the sensor device to interact with Robopet. At the very least, I want to get that down.

I’ll be meeting with the girls later today (wednesday). We’re going to work together so we can benefit each other. 50 hours remaining to presentation. Objectives:

- Complete a Written Dog Tag for our Project
- Using a Digital Camera, Take Snapshots of the Finalized Dog and Group Members
- …