Technabob » processing

Adalight Kit Adds Ambilight-like RGB Tech to Any Monitor

Technabob — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:00:20 +0000

I always thought those Philips Ambilight televisions looked cool – not that the glowing border around the TVs ever made me run out and buy one. Still, the effect is sort of cool, and theoretically makes everything on your TV more vibrant and immersive. So if you’ve ever wanted to play with the ambient light effect, but don’t have a display with the capability built in, now is your chance.

Ladyada is showing off a new project called Adalight, which uses an Arduino board and a strip of RGB LEDs around the back of your display to create an ambient color backdrop for your computer monitor. The system automatically detects the average colors around the perimeter of your display, and immediately responds with the appropriate LED color in the proper section of the LED strip. Since it works as a high-speed screen capture utility in the background, it works with pretty much any application on your computer.

Open source software using the Processing library runs on your PC, Mac or Linux and interfaces with the Arduino over USB, and sends the correct light colors to each of the LEDs pixels. See the Adalight in action in the video below:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Pretty cool, no? I suppose it could get to be a little annoying after a while, but it still might be pretty cool for 3D games and action movies. While you can build the Adalight from scratch, you can also purchase a project kit over at the MakerSHED for $49.95 (USD) to help you get started. The kit includes a strand of 25 RGB LED pixels and a 5VDC power adapter, but you will still need to purchase the Arduino and USB cable, and follow the rest of the build instructions to finish the project.

Vj Fader’S Fadertouch Touchscreen a/V Interface Lets Audience See What He’S Playing

Technabob — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 15:12:41 +0000

Live audio-visual artist VJ Fader tipped me off about this cool visual interface he built for manipulating music and images in real-time.

The faderTouch 3.0 isn’t just your run-of-the-mill sequencer. Nope, the unique portable device features an innovative rear-projection system that allows not only VJ, but his audience to watch the on-screen action. By installing a bright projector inside a briefcase, and aiming it at an angular projection screen, the display can be viewed from either side.

In addition to the projector, the screen has an infrared touch panel overlay which allows him to interact with his custom performance interface which was programmed using Processing, and acts as a MIDI controller for Ableton Live. Here’s a couple of videos showing off the system in action:

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

And if you check out the next clip, you can see the faderTouch being used in a live performance at the recent Wham Bam Thank You NAMM show- very cool indeed.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

Like what you saw and heard? You can check out a whole bunch of VJ Fader’s performances over on his YouTube page.

Robot Can Understand Several People Talking at Once

Technabob — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 03:48:27 +0000

Here’s a pretty impressive demonstration of a complex new speech recognition technology. The robot in this video clip is able to listen to three people speaking at the same exact moment, understand exactly what they each said, then process the data dynamically.

Be sure to have your speakers turned on for this video clip or you’ll miss how it works.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The Robot Audition Project is a collaborative effort by Kyoto University and Honda Research Institute Japan. The team has been working on developing these complex voice processing capabilities for several years now, but it’s only recently that they’ve got the system working so well. The application can not only recognize voices in real time, it can determine where they’re coming from using both auditory and visual cues, including face recognition technology.

The engineers who’ve designed the system have honed it enough now that they’ve even got it running on several different robotic platforms, including the Robovie R2 (seen in the video) and the well-known Honda Asimo.

Perhaps once they get these robots working in the real world, they’ll finally get my order right at the Burger King.