Surround Sound Chillage

Ever feel you just need a bit of harmony in your day, a few moments of clarity and calm? Find yourself battling with noise? Now you can relax online with the 3D Buddha Machine! Load it up and click until happy… if you feel it is too loud, scroll the mouse wheel.

What is it?

Based on the world famous Buddha Machine by FM3 (Zhang Jian and Christiaan Virant), this is an authentic online replica. Coded using the incredible Papervision libraries and my own personal Media Framework, the Buddha Machine 3D features all 9 original sounds from each the Buddha Machine I and II – kindly released under creative commons. Thanks to the magic of the internet, Christiaan popped by to offer his support. Thanks!
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What does it do?

Put on some headphones, click to find the sound for you, use the mouse wheel to set your volume, and relax. If you need a portable version, consider buying the original product – it fits in your pocket!

How does it work?

The Audio system reacts to the position of the 3D object, decided by the mouse, and considers one face as a speaker. As the object rotates this pans and fades the audio according to the trigonometry formulated from the angle between the user and the normal of the speaker faced plane. The volume is also reactive to clipped faces, and by that I mean speakers that are pointing away from the user, the further a speaker turns away from the user, the less it can be heard.

Sounds are loaded as mp3s from an xspf playlist and streamed, whilst the next track is pre-fetched to prevent gaps and loading delays when changing sounds.

How was it made?

I decided to avoid Flash entirely and instead use the free FLEX compiler from the Adobe site. This was mainly to see how using the FLEX compiler affects the size and performance of swf files compared to compiling through Flash, but also to see if I could avoid non OSS software. Process wise, using this development system, along with swc files for symbols, it is possible to create amazing web apps absolutely free of charge. As I am saving up for the next Flash, but in the meantime this lets me test out new features in the player right now! I see a synthesizer on the horizon next

Once you perfect your workflow, and don’t mind creating libraries of swc files, this is probably the most integrated and fastest method for Flash development. There are many tweaks and hacks that you have to apply to the commandline if you want to use a preloader, or don’t need all the FLEX libraries, or want to set a player target version, but thankfully, my development system of choice, FlashDevelop, has all of these as options preset in the GUI.

On the negative side, using the FLEX compiler does seem to add quite a few extra bytes to the runtime code, so at least consider a preloader!

Check it out

Buddha Machine 3D I.

Turns dreams into music

Ever wondered how your dreams sound? Ever wondered what your dreams would sound like if they had soundtracks? Wonder no longer with the dreamCapturer.

A USB product that accurately predicts your mood in realtime, creating a mood-mapped soundtrack of your sleep from your first dream through to the last.

With musical backing from members of the Hallé and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, thousands of mood instilling sounds were compiled together to form a database of samples capable of recreating any mood or emotion. From anger to happiness through to more obscure emotions such as ambivalence and angst.

With a fully animated graphic user interface designed in Flash, the dreamCapturer analyses your mood and represents it onscreen with character driven feedback. If you are stressed and your mood is a mixture of anger and rage, the onscreen character snarls and dips his eyebrows, if you are calm and happy, the onscreen character smiles and nods. Of course this is all in time to the music!

How it Works

Connect the dream quilt sensor to your thumb and click the big blue button. Immediately your ‘baseline‘ mood is being analysed. Over the space of a few minutes of constant use, the dreamCapturer learns what your normal mood is and begins the music process. As soon as you are calibrated, the dreamCapturer gets to work every tenth of a second recognising alterations and trends in your mood and looking for relevant sounds in its audio database.

The database is categorised into four channels of audio each with its own specific emotional fingerprint :
the first channel is the percussion where pace and action are described;
the second channel hosts the classical instruments which bring major and minor emotions;
the third is the bass where fear and sensitivity are shaped;
the final channel holds melody sounds and masked audio such as pink noise.

Once the dreamCapturer begins interpreting your emotions, it harmonises the four channels with relevant sounds all set to the BPM set by the percussion channel. If you are having a nightmare, prepare to hear some uncomfortable sounds… of course happy dreams are relaxed and enjoyable late night listening.

Depending on many parameters measured from your body (and not your brain!) the dreamCapturer recognises when you are falling asleep, and when you are awake and does a pretty good job of figuring out how many dreams you had in between! When you log back onto your computer in the morning you can check your emails, and now you can check your dreams-inbox as they are stored in the dream vault.

Technical details

1. USB 2.0 hot pluggable.
2. Uses GSR (lie-detectors) and body temperature to determine mood.
3. Fully animated GUI programmed in Flash. Realtime character representation of mood.
4. Low latency mood capture with accurate mood determination algorithms.
5. Audio samples from bin-aural to classical from well respected musicians, scientists and artists.
6. Save your dreams, banish your nightmares or email them to your friends.

21st Century Tap dancing

Tap Dancing is finally coming back into style – thanks to the Beatbox Sneakers!

With Kick drums in your heels, snares under your toes and crash hats when you kick, every step becomes a sound.

With a whole arsenal of percussion located behind pressure sensors mounted around the shoes, click your heels together for a cow-bell, swivelling the ball of your foot scratches the sound…

these all-in-one drumkit shoes really do prove “you’re the greatest dancer”.

A Kettle for the Visually Impaired

A large proportion of the world has trouble seeing, or trouble moving. Boiling hot water, Mains electricity, Manual operation … Kettles are hardly the safest or easiest to use items. Enter the sense kettle. Self filling, self pouring, easy to operate and designed specifically for people who are blind.

As a self contained unit, the sense kettle never needs to be moved, fills itself when empty and has a large steady untippable footprint.

The deep groove guides the operation from boil to pour

Designed to be placed in corners of kitchen surfaces, the kettle can easily be located by feel alone along walls and its rough two-tone texture makes operation easy whilst remaining completely cold to the touch.

Operation is unique. There is a shut-line that separates the orange and white sections, a groove that starts at the top of the kettle and flows vertically down the face. If you put your finger in the groove and follow it down, the buttons interrupt your flow until they are pushed which forces them flush, continuing the groove onto the next button.

There are two buttons : Fill & Boil

Clicked at the start and thrust out once boiled to an audible alarm.

Pour

Insert your mug under the nozzle on the corner of the cube and pour.

The cup angles away from the user to prevent spillage

The tray is specially designed to tip the mug away from your body, so if you accidentally overfill, there will always be a safety gap at the top of your mug. A pressure sensor prevents pouring without a mug and all overflowed water is safely discarded.
One of the niftiest features is the glowing cube of water. As a product for the visually impaired, knowing the state of the device at all times is imperative, so there is always physical and audible feedback. The cube starts glowing blue and fades to red as the water boils.

Shown at home in the kitchen

This was a very simple idea but highly effective when demostrated. All in all, the Sense kettle is a quality of life enhancement device.