Andrew O'Malley's electronic art, music, and technology blog
Just a quick post to share a video of some of the first animations I’ve programmed for DOTKLOK, my upcoming open-source digital clock with multiple time animations.
The final version will probably have a black/smoked case with a choice of red or green LEDs.
Not sure if the buttons will be on the side or the bottom yet — which would you prefer?
Thanks to the laser cutter at NYC Resistor, I have my first DOTKLOK beta w/ an “open concept” enclosure:
Not sure that this is what the final clock will actually look like, but I now have a nice prototype to program on.
Since this will be an open source kit, I’m looking for feedback about the buttons.
Should the buttons remain on the side? Should there be more buttons? Should they go along the bottom/top?
I’m looking for suggestions that balance usability, adaptability, and of course aesthetics.
Please provide feedback if you have any — this is your chance to contribute to the final design 
Thanks!
A few more pics from the prototyping stage of DOTKLOK (see my introductory blog post here.
I’ve soldered my prototyping circuit together:
Next up: a user interface (buttons!) and writing lots of time animations . . .
Today I made some initial progress on one of my summer projects here at NYC Resistor – a rudimentary mock-up of the DOTKLOK hardware:
DOTKLOK will be an open source clock kit with multiple time-telling animations, some literal like the simple display above, and others showing the passage of time through abstract patterns, following on from my Electric Window 3 series.
The inspiration for this clock is to combine a bunch of cool ways to show time — such as in a sentence, with words, or retro game displays — along with my own original animations, while providing a platform on which others can further develop cool timepieces.
Thanks to a great RTC1307 tutorial and library by Adafruit, I was interfacing with the clock chip faster than expected, and soon had a rudimentary sketch up and running:
The font’s not too hot, but it’s the default one I had from the Electric Window 3 software. I’ll be developing several special time fonts and and animations over the next few weeks, along with designing a cool laser-cut acrylic case to round out a kit that’ll be great for both those who want to hack and mod the clock, and those who simply want to plug it in and enjoy.
I’ve officially begun my residency at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center in NYC:
[ Eyebeam bio ]
Working with Hernani Dias on the Re:Farm project (see my previous post for some more info about the Re:Farm project), my first objective is to create the PCB for the Re:Farm On The Wall module, a data visualization module using an LED display to present data away from the computer screen.
[ details after the break ]
I’m happy to announce that I’m spending an art-focused summer in NYC! Between now and the end of August, I’ll be based out of midtown Manhattan.
It already feels like I have more projects than the time to complete them 
I’ve secured an “artist in residency” position with NYC Resistor, where I have open access to their space, including all the electronics tools I’ll need along with some cool fabrication tools, including a laser cutter.
[ more after the break ]
Back in February, I saw this call for single button, interactive objects to be displayed at an exhibition called “one button objects,” in San Francisco, as part of the Gamma4 one button game event during the 2010 Game Developers Conference.
This presented a perfect opportunity to experiment with interactivity and sensor input for my Electric Window 3 platform.
After sketching out several 1-button game ideas, I decided to move forward with some simple particle systems, controlled by users through their interaction with a single button added to an Electric Window 3 fixture. Thus was born Electric Window 3B:
[ more info and VID after the break ]
Intro
Chinatown Remixed runs from May 8 to June 8, 2010, in Ottawa’s Chinatown district. This is the second year for the annual “art walking tour,” where local businesses, restaurants, and shops open their doors to collaborate with artists, providing art “exhibtions in unusual places.”
Last year, Deb and I made a “Chinatown Remixed” sign from electroluminescent (EL) wire, where the various syllables were individually lit, trigged by pedestrian and auto traffic detected by an ultrasonic sensor (see this previous post for details). This year, the sign is hanging in Umi Cafe (610 Somerset St. W.), although this time driven by random sequences instead of the sensor.
Our new contribution to this year’s event is a window installation at the Oriental Charm gift shop (653 Somerset St. W.):
The installation includes a few light boxes from the Electric Window 4 series:
The main attraction, however, is a group of new Electric Window 3 light boxes, that in addition to their usual geometric and video game -inspired patterns, display messages from Twitter:
[After the break: how it all works and pics of opening day ]
Just a quick note to say what a pleasant surprise it was to find out that last week, my lighting art was featured on blog of all things cool, geeky, and techy, Boingboing
You can visit the post here.
Scope
This post assumes some knowledge of PCB etching methods and is an account of my experience with the toner transfer method. If this is new to you, you may have to get Googling on a few of things mentioned here. That said, I’ve linked to the sites I found most useful during the process.
Intro
Up until now, I’ve been hand wiring all the the circuits for my Electric Window series.
It’s a fairly straightforward process to build the circuit on a piece of protoboard, and for an Electric Window 3 circuit, it takes about two hours. The bottleneck of this process is preparing all the connecting wires (shown in white in the above photo) and ensuring all the interconnections are correct, ie, connecting the right components to the right pins of the microprocessor and the power and ground points.
While I find this process efficient/adequate for one-off circuits and prototypes, it gets monotonous when making multiple copies of the same circuit.
For our recent contribution to the Chinatown Remixed exhibition, Deb and I (working as The Latest Artists) envisioned a series of Electric Window 3 light boxes, displaying various animations along with text from Twitter via a wireless internet connection. I decied to use this as an opportunity to finally learn how to etch PCBs.
I’d previously been intimidated by the PCB etching process for similar reasons as Collin from Make:
There seemed to be a steep learning curve, as I’d yet to use electronic CAD software such as Eagle, and the actual etchning process seemed finicky and messy.
After watching Collin’s video, a few others on YouTube, and reading some on-line tutorials (found via Google), I decided to attempt etching with the toner transfer method, since I already have a laser printer and clothes iron.
[ More after the break . . . ]