POSTED 21.01.2012 @ 12:48

So far we have come to an agreement, Devonport needs to be rediscovered. Not only by the residents, but by outsiders too; including me. I have only been to Devonport once or twice, both times for the purposes of this project. Usually I am really good navigating myself around an unknown foreign space, but I really struggled to find my bearings this time. Looking at maps has no uses, pathways which were once there have disappeared since or are cordoned off by construction sites; something needs to be done. Our concept is essentially a re-imagining of the “Marauders Map” from [...] (read more…)

POSTED 20.01.2012 @ 12:29

From my previous blog post, I briefly mentioned the aiding in reconstruction of the Devonport community. Since then we have once again met up in our groups to discuss what problems the community currently faces, and went through picking apart the area plucking out keywords we found relevant. The physical structure and layout of Devonport has been forever changing. Once before it used to be its own town, but since the Blitz bombings in 1941 during World War II much of the area of Devonport had been practically wiped out. During the redevelopment phase which happened much much later private [...] (read more…)

POSTED 16.01.2012 @ 20:25

It has revolved around to taking part in embedding the digital immaterial into physical material. Architecture and physical space is somewhere which I haven’t ventured to much in my studies, but have been presented with the perfect opportunity to dabble around. Presented with an area of Plymouth called Devonport, we have been presented with a pretty open brief on aiding the reconstruction of a community which has been deprived of attention for so long. All of the research activities in this module are group-work, and our lecturer has taken the task of mixing together students from the 2nd/3rd year of [...] (read more…)

POSTED 09.01.2012 @ 16:49

Well, I will be honest. This idea had no time to incubate or develop over the Christmas holidays. Each member of the group had full plans over the Christmas holiday and didn’t get time to put any serious thought into the final outcome of this project. In some ways this is really good, especially for our group. Overanalysis is something commonly done which can detract an idea from its original roots. Having a short time period to work on an idea has allowed us to think up a very simple and intuitive idea which will change how we can live [...] (read more…)

POSTED 08.01.2012 @ 16:32

Another project done, another research task set! This time we have been presented with the technology of IBM’s Websphere MQ, which utilises a publish/subscribe methodology behind sending messages to and from different devices. In the first set of sessions representatives from IBM gave a demonstration of the software, and a workshop detailing the basics of how the system could be integrated into Arduino technologies. In the previous research task we also worked with Arduino, so having already worked with this technology before was a great advantage. The test system we first built together involved triggering a microphone threshold on one [...] (read more…)

POSTED 09.11.2011 @ 20:52

This week in the Everyware module, we have now completed experimenting with Arduino technologies, and have now moved onto spaces and how we move around in them. Through the examination of different spaces we are able to analyse key routes through a particular area and highlight unoptimised areas. The latest task is to map out a floor plan of the Drake Circus shopping centre in Plymouth, and come up with a personal assessment of how we think the network of space works. This not only involves checking a space from an architectural point of view, but also to get an [...] (read more…)

POSTED 07.11.2011 @ 19:21

I wasn’t originally going to blog about Extended Play 2011, but circumstances changed and I have more to write about! Come tuesday last week, the course leader called me up and asked me if I was interested in demonstrating the RFIDHTER project for the DAT course and to give a student prescence at the show. This really excited me, and then me and the team spent the next few days cleaning up the game in preparation for the event! The controllers got re-jigged around and built sturdier; not to mention we sexified them up with heatshrink tubing to make the [...] (read more…)

POSTED 27.10.2011 @ 16:09

This project turned out to be a complete blast! As seen by the visible lack of previous blog posts I have been heavily tied up in the development of this project. After brainstorming and implementing a constant stream of new features with the rest of the team we managed to pull an all-nighter and really get this project into a rather polished and playable state. In the end to create this into a multiplayer fighter game we required two sets of the Arduino kits. Since the previous blog post we had merged with another group which had gained us two [...] (read more…)

POSTED 12.10.2011 @ 19:34

One of the modules covered in my final year is Everyware; which as I understand it involves the use of Arduino systems. Unfortunately I managed to miss the only lecture of the year so far which involves getting us into pairs; and after communicating with fellow coursemates I have discovered I seem to be the odd one out. Because of this I have paired up with an existing pair in hope that I will be able to continue on with this module OK. In the past years we have been presented with Arduino but I have managed to dodge and [...] (read more…)