From Wiki

7-7-2009
Tuesday

Research:

chomsky
visual artists,designers who hav explored ecology
land art
Murray Schaffer
Pauline oliveros

Today's session started off with a recap of the previous days discussion for the benifit of the new entries,i.e the fourth years who joined us. We discussed about microprocessors, computers, sensors and issues such as pollution and ways to measure it. Later in the day we read an interview of David Dunn.He is a music composer who works closely with nature and ecology and the sounds in the outdoors. We had a discussion about the differene in financial conditions of artists and scientists.Is it justified that the government sponsers scientific experiments more readily than art based ventures? What role do the art n science communities play in generating such views of them by the people? What role will we,the students of this lab,have in the whole art-science system? These were a few questions that cropped up in during the course of the discussion. We read up about the arduino board and saw how it works when connected to a computer program. After that we learnt about prosessing language and learnt a few programs. I found writing the programs very interesting.I found the language quite similar to C language.

8-7-09
Wednesday

Today we explored more of processing.We took forward yesterday's programs and modified them.The programs included colouring alternate boxes and alternate lines. We also read up about the keyPressed function and wrote a program using it. I found a lot of it quite confusing in the begining, especially the checker board program. A lot of mistakes that i made ended up with interesting results. Exploring further into the above programs, i made patterns and tried to figure out the logic behind it.We used 'if', 'else' anf 'for' in our programs. After todays class I hope I get a better hang on processing.

9-7-2009
Thursday
controlling arduino through processing.
- Used mouseover and keypressed.

13-7-09
Monday
Read ups: http://intheair.es/

          http://www.cseindia.org/campaign/apc/apc-index.htm
          http://www.cseindia.org/AboutUs/press_releases/press-20090722.htm
          http://www.gobartimes.org/20090715/gt_covfeature.asp

The read ups were mostly about pollution levels and different kinds of pollutants. The articles also talked about the sensors and effectiveness and application of the data collected throughout the country. We wrote two simple programs to load images and fonts.

Victor made a presentation about his project.This gave me a little insight into the kind of work we may be dealing with in the later parts of this project.

14-7-09
Tuesday

We did a lot of reading today. Most of the day was spent on reading the pdf. I also did a bit of research about the number of MPs who come from political families. this data has to be represented in a visual or graph. Though i didn't understand how this exercise is connected to the kind of work we are doing, i will just take it as an assignment to get us to think of ways to represent data visually. I also worked on the map exercise where we had to pick out any map and hav points on it that kept changing values.

15-7-09
Wednesday
15-7-09 Wednesday

We were given an assignment to use the sensors available and create an interactive product which has an action-reaction application. Working in groups we came up with a few ideas and made prototypes. My group decided to use the pressure sensor and speaker along with the arduino board to create the desired interface.We read up arduino tutorials to get a better idea of what we are going to be dealing with. Due to limiterd availablity of bread boards we were not able to experiment much. I am really looking forward to executing this project.

16-7-09
Thursday

We got our hands on the breadboard by the end of class. Before that we just read up a little more about arduino and the various senors. We ideated a little more about our product and played around with musical notes to use for the melody. We tried playing tunes on virtual keyboards on the internet and getting the same tunes to play on arduino.

We are using the pressure sensor. We are making 'Rudolf the red nosed raindeer'. When his tail is pressed, The Rudolf tune plays and his red nose starts blinking. Now that we know what we are going to do, we need to figure out how we are going to do it.

20-7-09
Monday

Marc joined us in class today.He talked to us about his work and also taught us basics of electronics.It was very interesting to see his work. We saw a musical device that he made using very basic electronics. He encouraged us to make our own simple circuits.In his words, "You wont understand how things work until you get your hands dirty", so it was nice to get some hands on experience on working with circuits.

Our pressure sensor didnt seem to work so we had to work with something else
for our little project from last week, we experimented with the proximity sensor.

21-7-09
Tuesday
We downloaded a few softwares and learnt a bit of scripting.PuTTy, filezilla and WAMP were the softwares we downloaded. These were needed to connect out sensors to the internet and recieve data. We experimented a little bit more with circuits.

22-7-09
Wednesday

We were given an assignment to create a device using sensors and uploading it to the net using pachube.
We decided to install a motion sensor in the girls washroom in front of the mirror. If one stands in front of it for too long, "mirror morror on the wall", or some such thing will be played.

In the evening i attended the diy party. It was extremley fun to solder and make my own musical device. I learnt quite a few tricks about soldering and circuits from Yashas, Marc and Victor.I got much better and faster at soldering and assembling by the end of the day. I still need to make an amplifier for my device. I need to finish the product and put it in a neat box.Hopefully i can finish all that tomorrow.

We are meeting our clients, i.e Two scientists tomorrow.We are probably going to hav a question-answer session where we get to know their expectations and they, ours.

I feel that the course is taking an interesting turn now. Things are gaining momentum and everybody is getting down to work.

23-7-09
Thursday

We had a discussion with the two scientists who were the braind behind our project. They told us that this whole idea about the pollution sensors arised when they were casually having a dinner conversation. They got in touch with Yashas after discovering that he to was working with the same things. We had quite an interesting discussion about the future course of our project. We talked about government policies and how we can work around it. A lot of interesting ideas came about and 3 or 4 of these ideas will be carried forward and seen through.

27-7-09
Monday

We are having a diy bio-electronics workshop for the next couple of days with Marc.We built a microscope using a simple webcam and examined many samples. It was really interesting to watch micro-organisms.I discovered that there is something called the waterbear. It is a multicellular little animal that has claws n stuff.It has been a long since biology has even crossed my mind, so it was nice to work with slides and samples n look for life through the microscope. We could even use lego in any fashion we wanted to make our microscope stable.

28-7-09
Tuesday

We went for a walk this morning. We collected samples from different locations. We walked along a street n went through a village and railtracks and finally reached a lake. Along the way we collected samples of anything we found interesting and marked them. We returned to class after lunch and examined a few of these samples for life. Unfortunately I didnt find any trace of life in the samples that I observed. Hopefully tomorrow i will have better luck.

- Pollution sensor is installed at a traffic signal.
- Simple graph    that anyone can understand   shows people the data.
- Since majority of the people keep their ignition on during signals, they can see an immidiate increase of pollution levels on an 
 LCD/LED.

- During our talk with the scientists, we came to a consensus that  people dont do much if they dont see any immidiate danger 
 or effect.

- the LED/LCD screen will inidicate to the people that it might help to reduce the pollution indicated on the display if they 
kindly switch 
  off their ignitions.
- If and when they do that, the levels will automatically go down and the screen will display a "Thank you, your effort has 
 helped in moving
 towards a cleaner future".(or something to that effect).

- Though in the bigger picture we are targeting all the vehicle using audience, we are segmenting them each time to only 
 the people at the
 signal at that particular time.This works in a way that it is directed to a small number of people which 
 will make it more effective.

- By doing this, people will feel more personally involved, and they also dont need to take time off to do so.

29-7-09
Wednesday

Today I uploaded pictures of our walk on to the DIY wiki.I worked a bit on my concept for the final project.

30-7-09
Thursday

Today everyone showed their proposals for the final pollution sensors. There were a few interesting ideas. We discussed about each of the ideas and finally decided on four final projects and two backups. Now suddenly there seems to be too little time to finish all these projects but im sure we'll all work together and make it possible.

3-8-09
Monday

Rustam joined us in class today and we had quite an interesting discussion about the direction our projects were taking.He said a lot about the politics involved even in environmental issues.Following are a few notes that i made during discussion.

- Audiences? Who are the stakeholders? - industries, factories, car manufacturers,
  fuel companies.
- battle between environmentalists and others.
- What will the public need to kno? what are the refrence points for them?
- Who will get affected by air pollution most?- urban poor- no healthcare facilities,
  they dont cause it.
- Politics of pollution
- Understand the politics(fuel politics, industrial politics)
- Place sensors in strategic locations. poke the system in the right place to create
  impact.
- Bangalore is one of the 60 cities that contribute most to air pollution.

 Video of our proposal :
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b1_vw-bzRs

4-8-09
Tuesday

We got down to actually working on our chosen projects today.I am working on my concept about the traffic signal pollution detector.There are three to four of us working on this project. We made a 3d model of the idea on google sketchup. We worked a bit more on the smaller details and problems concerning this project. I am all fueled up and ready to work and make this thing happen. We need to find one of the longest signals in bangalore and work out how we can install it there. There is also the issue of switching off and switching on the ignition within a short span of time. This actually wastes more fuel so we need to figure out a way around it.Using a timer seems to be a good idea to overcome this glich. We are working with a small LCD display for our prototype.

5-8-09
Wednesday

We have to work on and finish our prototype by this afternoon. I was doing some research about the warious signals in bangalore and got an idea about the name of this project. Right now it is called EXAUSTED. I think "SMOKE SIGNAL" is very apt for this project. Therefoe our project is now called Smoke signal!!

6-8-09
Thursday

We are still working on the prototype for our gas sensor. We are working with an LCD display right now but if and when we build the real one we will be using an LED display.

Take a look at the new video of our newly named project:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt87YBuOFTI

10-8-09
Monday

Today was quite a productive day because we got the lcd display working. With a little diffuculty, we also got the gas sensor to work. There were problems with our soldering but we set it right.The prototype is almost done. We just have to get the lcd display to work with the gas sensor. I want to get down to actually making the final project.To do that several small details need to be taken care of and that just doesnt seem to be happening. The group is disconnected and I feel put off because of that.We have about one month to finish this project and i think it is definately possible to get it out if we just work with some focus.

11-8-09
Tuesday

We got the gas sensor to work with the lcd display.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ0OatUm0rs

                            Only Air                                                   With Gas in Air

12-8-09
Wednesday

We found that our connections n circuits were not very stable in our prototype. There were a lot of short circuits. We took Victor's help to take apart the whole thing and re-connect in a more organized and neat manner. I learnt that it really helps a lot when the wires are neatly arranged and makes it much easier to find where the problems lie.So now the prototype is sturdy and we just need to give it a pleasing appearence.

13-8-09
Thursday

The scientists who were supposed to come today and look at our prototypes could'nt make it.We are still brainstorming about what form to give the prototype because just putting it in a box doesnt seem interesting.

17-8-09 to 20-8-09
Monday to Thursday

This whole week was mainly spent on finer details of our prototype. We made a box for it after quite a bit of contemplation. We thought of making a form for the prototype but ended up not doing that. We felt that the final product would not be dependent on the form. We met Ramesh on Wednesday and discussed about our general performence through this course. The scientists came on Thursday and we had a whole panel of people to look at our presentations. I was pretty happy bout the way our presentation went. We had included all the important points we could and made it a full and proper presentation. I was particularly happy about the SWOT analysis we did for this project. I think SWOT is a very powerfull tool for any product or enterprice or even self eveluation. It helped us eveluate our project and look at it critically. We thought about its feasibility and the impact it would make.A lot of important points came out during the discussion.

24-8-09
Monday
After talking to the panel last week, we realised that we really need to get people's views on this matter. We created a group on facebook and worked on a poll. The poll is going be sent out to friends of ours and similar groups in facebook.

25-8-09
Tuesday

We set out to the city today with high expectations on getting something done. We went to the Bangalore police commissioner's office. Everything seemed to go smoothly in the begining. We got our passes, went to the DCP-PRO and got permission to meet the DCP of traffic police. We were told he was cominig in for a meeting and we could meet him as soon as the meeting was over. We later found out that the meetings are usually long. So we went out to one of the signals we had shortlisted and tested the prototype there. We went directly to Shivajinagar and found that he was not back yet. We went back to the office only to find that he was off to lunch n off for the day! So it was pretty frustrating.

The link to the Video for rhe road testing of our prototype: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-f9ZgOja4I

25-8-09
Wednesday
Now that we are done with the prototyping, we started thinking about the publicity for this project. We need to know what the general public thinks. Do they care at all? What is their take on the whole pollution topic? Do they have the time to worry about it or does everyone hav enough problems in their lives to care about something so "trivial"?

26-8-09
Thursday
We created a group on facebook to spread the word about the project and also to get feedback. We created a small survey to get an idea about what people really feel about air pollution and if they care.

31-8-09 & 3-9-09
Monday & Thursday
The facebook group is updated and the invitations have been sent. I am curious to find out what comes out of this. I wonder if it will help us refine our project. People have started joining the group ant taking the survey.
We also got the scrolling LED screen. I was a little dissapointed because the screen is not big enough and working on another prototype doesnt seem to make sense.We got the screen to work though, and can input any text into it. I am a little worried about the completion of this project because we have just about a week more of this course. I dont know how we will be able to work it out. I really hope we get to see this project through.

People have already started joining our group on facebook and there are about 80 people already. 20 of them have taken the survey so far and here are a few comments that they left :

"climate change affects me in a more personal way than most people. climate change affects one of my immediate family members adversely. she wheezes and gets constantly sick. the weather in bangalore used to be constant but now its extreme. cold in the morning and like an extremely hot summer in the afternoon. rainy one day, dry the next. i am worried but i guess i feel that it realy is too late..."

"Environment protection is not just about turning off lights and using less plastic....it involves using resources carefully, and not misusing any resource. It also means getting others to follow these rules too."

"The questions listed above are quite appropriate . Instead of four there could have been more questions which will make the viewer take some time out to think seriously."

8-9-09
Tuesday

Today we had to use the LED board on a t-shirt and program some text connected to the project on to it. We joined the t-shirt group and went to the city to get public opnion. The message we were displaying on the t-shirt was connected to the overall project and we talked to a lot of people to see what they thought about the pollution level in Bangalore. Most people we talked to seemed to have a sort of passive approach to the whole thing. They said they cared, but didnt seem to know what to do about it. Many just feel that it is too late for anyone to do anything and everything will happen in its own time.
About ten of us went to the city and we had to document the whole process. This is the part i was not too happy about because there was a lot of disagreements about how we went about it. Some felt it would be right if we split up into smaller groups and went about talking to people, and some felt we should all stick together. This confusion really led to a lot of problems because we could not document either group properly. We had only one handicam and half the time was spent trying to find people of the group.
We did get to talk to a lot of people though, and we got many opnions.
I didnt see the point of giving random people on the road our email id, I mean who will go back home and mail some random people with wacky t-shirts they met on the road???

Here are the pictures of the LED integrated t-shirts:

Here are the pictures of the t-shirt and smoke signal product prototype:

The course has been extended by a week. I was a little dissapointed about this because it would mean the i will miss the sinectics course that everyone else from core skills will be attending. Also almost all the work we set out to do is done and i dont get what else has to be done.
We made another addition to our prototype by integrating it with an LED board instead of an LCD display. Most of the past few days have been spent on documentation. We took pictures of the prototype as well as the t-shirts. The first set of pictures and videos didnt turn out too good so we had to re-shoot everything. I have learnt that it is very hard to work in a group. Just because of one or two people the whole schedule gets upset. People don't turn up on time and dont stick together as a group.
We decided to shoot video of our prototype in college itself. We finally got everything we needed in one place and finished shooting within an hour.

Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfyYkaiGy1c

The pictures hav been sent to the publication group and videos are going to be put up on youtube.
The facebook group is active and a lot of people are waiting to get involved. I sincerely hope the prototype is taken forward and it actually comes up on MG road or some such busy road. The course has almost come to an end but I hope the project is taken forward and would love to work on it outside other courses if i can.