New “big font” time display

If you haven’t already, it’s time to update your DOTKLOK!  When you plug your DOTKLOK in, the software version will briefly be displayed (if there is no display, you are running code version 1.0 or older).  The latest release is version 1.3, now available at the DOTKLOK project page in the Source section; you’ll also find the instructions for updating your DOTKLOK in the usage instructions document.

There’s been a lot changes, updates, and improvements made between version 1.0 and 1.3, so I thought I’d summarize them here.  In addition to a handful of behind-the-scenes improvements to the inner workings of the code, the total animation count has almost doubled from the original 8 animations to the current variety of 14!

As shown in the photo at the top of this article, I’ve created a new “big font” time display that replaces the original “basic time” display; this was done both to take more advantage of the total screen space, and to add more variety since the “basic time” and “game time” displays were very similar (aside from the occasional visit from Pacman and friends).

Here’s a rundown of the new animations:

Shown above is a shot of the “game time” animation.  Although not new to most, this animation was actually introduced in version 1.1 of the code, so some of you out there might be missing this fun one.  With each new minute, the old time is randomly cleared, either by a dissolve, getting eaten by Pacman or a Space Invader, or wiped away by falling Tetris blocks.  I think it’s best illustrated with a video:

The above photo shows “Morse time,” which, as I’m sure you can infer, shows the time in Morse code.  The hours, minutes, and seconds scroll across the screen at randomly changing rates, giving the feeling of trains passing in parallel at different speeds.

With all the abstract and digital time representations, I’d been wanting something a bit more “traditional” for a while, so I came up w/ this simple and minimal analog clock face; it’s only accurate to 5 minutes — due to the low resolution of the screen — but this fits in well since most DOTKLOK animations have some sort of twist when it comes to showing the time

Version 1.2 of the code brought “accumulator time:”

Inspired by the analog clock face from version 1.1, but with a digital twist, I wanted an animation that both showed time accumulating over the day, and was easy to read.  Each full block represents an entire hour, and the individual dots of each block represent 5 minutes each; so the time shown above is 9:30.

And what “geeky” clock would be complete without a binary clock?!

But of course, rather than simply showing the hours, minutes, and seconds in an abstract/binary format (we have Morse time for that), this binary display represents the number of seconds passed in the current year (adjusted for leap-years, even).  The motivation behind this one was to have a pattern that takes much longer than 24 hours to repeat.

Which brings us to 1.3: an updated big font (shown at the top of this article), and brightness adjustment!  The usage instructions explain how to chose from the 5 brightness levels now available for the LED screen.

So . . . if your DOTKLOK is running code version 1.2 or earlier, I recommend you get yourself an FTDI cable or an Arduino and make use of that programming header; everything is covered in the usage instructions.

Enjoy!

Other news

In other DOTKLOK news, we’re starting to get some community contributions.

Bryan added a photo-resistor to his DOTKLOK so the brightness adjusts automatically:

You can see his Instructable for all the how-to on that one.

Another hardware mod includes Daniel’s addition of a temperature sensor.  All the mods for DOTKLOK will be chronicled at the DOTKLOK Facebook page.

The abundant Tube Clock Database blog also favorably reviewed DOTKLOK; you can read the whole article here, or check out the accompanying video below:

Time will only tell what comes next

The first customer-created review vid also surfaced this week:

I keep an on-going list of press on the DOTKLOK Facebook page.

As you may have noticed from the sidebar on the right of this page, DOTKLOK “unofficially” launched before Christmas when I quietly put it up on Etsy, planning to spread the word during the beginning of 2011 . . .

Well, things got started for me when it was picked up over the holidays by a handful of blogs, including OhGizmo, Totally Cool Gadgets, Smidigit (Sweden), Rock N Tech (Brazil), Gizmodiva, GeekAlerts, The Vine (Australia),  HomeDosh, dubbing DOTKLOK “one of the coolest clocks ever made,” Technabob (UK), and a major source of those first orders, the German Engadget site.

The internet did its magic: I received a bunch of European orders which pushed me into production mode.

Now that a dedicated webpage including documentation is done, I feel safe saying that DOTKLOK has officially launched

For the final “1.0″ design, I opted to put the buttons on the sides, which not only makes them easier to use (as opposed to along the bottom edge), but also makes it possible to repurpose or adapt DOTKLOK so two people can play a game of Pong — definitely something coming to a future firmware update.

Here’s a vid showing some patterns operating on the 1.0 hardware release:

DOTKLOK is available either as a kit (fully illustrated instructions included), or fully assembled and programmed, ready to go!  It’s available in red or green versions as well.  At the moment all sales are handled through my Etsy page.

Here’s a few reactions from the first lucky owners:

“Received the clock in time to give to my partner as a b’day present today. It was a great hit and best part is I get to enjoy it as well”

“The clock arrived a couple of days ago. Looks great on my living room wall!  I really like the Dotklok. The parts are high quality, beautifully finished faceplates and assembling the kit was a lot of fun! Thanks for making this really cool clock!”

I’ve set up a Facebook page to upload user pics and as a support forum and place for people to make suggestions for future animations.

Next up, a promo/press sheet and then the first real promo push . . .

During the Electric Fields biennial festival of electronic art and music in Ottawa, Karsh Masson Gallery hosted the Prototype exhibition, which focused on the iterative processes behind electronic-based art.

Unfortunately I don’t have as many photos of the exhibit as I’d like, as the whole experience was a bit of a whirlwind, with two days dedicated to installation and only four full days of exhibition.

Since DOTKLOK is still in the prototype/development stage, it made for a perfect candidate for the exhibition.  Alongside a working beta model, I hung a series of photos illustrating the various stages of the clock up to the present, along with a time line documenting DOTKLOK’s progress to date:

Since I consider them “works in progress” which I adapt to the context at hand, I also installed my cold cathode pieces, Flaven and Mantelpiece, in the gallery windows, which provided some extra “flash” to the show in an attempt to grab attention from passers by.

Also in the exhibit was nichola feldman-kiss‘ robotic eye, a video showcase of Gordon Monahan’s speaker swinging technology, and Catherine Richards‘ 3D video experiment, Swim Test:

Of particular interest to me was Donna Legault’s work, which makes use of numerous woofers connected to amplifiers controlled by Pure Data to translate the ambient sound in the exhibition space to “infrasound:” low-frequency signals that rattle the woofers in a more visual manner than aural.  For the Prototype exhibition, Donna was experimenting with inputs from touch sensors located at either side of her installation, transposing the electrical energy picked up from gallery visitors into signals which visibly rocked a “pool” of woofers:

Upon realizing the obvious overlap occurring from Donna’s practice of transforming sound to movement and my regular practice of using movement to trigger lighting, some sort of collaboration was inevitable.

Taking the ethos of the Prototype show to heart, we spent some time in the studio the night before the exhibit opened to get a working proof of concept up and running:

In a short time, we were able to merge our two practices: Donna’s portion listening to the ambient noise in the room with a microphone and sending the transposed infrasound to the speaker, and my part using a light sensor to detect the movement of the speaker cone and modulate the color and brightness of an LED strip.

The result was repeatable enough that we installed it the next day as an impromptu addition to the show:

Perhaps not such an interesting result on its own — and I do wish I’d had a chance to get some better documentation prior to the show’s tear down — but an encouraging combination of electronic practices absent of any electrical connection between the two systems.  I look forward to seeing what we come up with in a larger, more directed context when the opportunity arises!

For a detailed account of all the various projects I worked on this past summer during my residency at NYC Resistor, I invite you to check out this post I did for their blog.

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?

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 ]

Each time the button is pressed, a new particle (represented by a single LED) is born.  The speed of each new particle is based on the average time between previous births.  Thus, the system has a form of “memory” shaped by previous users.

There are several variants of the particle systems in terms of particle behavior: particles either constantly scroll across the screen and wrap around at the borders; bounce back and forth (or up and down) within the screen; or travel both up and down and side to side, creating the opportunity for collisions.  In the latter case, when the particles collide, they both die.  In all cases, the particle system only has room for so many particles, so after a certain number of births (via button presses), the system resets.  This teases users to find a balance between a “boring” system of few particles versus creating a busy/dynamic system at the risk of killing the whole thing.

The guiding principle was to create an engaging, evolving display from a simple set of rules and user input.

Here’s a video demo:

The curators — Heather Kelly of Kokoromi and Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music/Motion — accepted the piece into the exhibition which took place on March 11-13 2010 at the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts.

I’m now planning to implement particle system animations into future Electric Window 3 fixtures, and more generally, start adding time-based behavior and user input (both direct via buttons etc., and indirect via motion sensors, etc.) to my light fixtures.

It’s always great to have a specific project like this to nudge one along and try out some new ideas and add a new angle to one’s work

This work was generously supported by the art funding program of the City of Ottawa.

This series revolves around a matrix of 16 LEDs with individually controlled brightness and fading, making it an organic/analog sibling to the 3.xx series which uses LED screens with a large group of on/off, or binary/digital behaving pixels.

Development of this series was fairly straightforward, extending on the work done for the Orion light boxes last spring, with the hardware based on the TLC5940 LED driver, controlled by an Arduino (and using Alex Leone’s great TLC library).

On the software side, it became an exercise of “how much content can I write for 16 LEDs?”  Although the Orion boxes simply simulate a twinkling star field, the orderly grid of Electric Window 4.xx demanded more than mere randomness.

So I wrote a series of pattern-generating functions using sinusoidal values to create soothing waves, adapted some of the grid-filling patterns from Electric Window 3.xx, along with a few other routines that specifically address the 4 x 4 grid of this series by randomly toggling the brightness values of rows and columns to create evolving greyscale patterns.

Diffusing the LEDs with acrylic gives the display a nice ghostly aesthetic.   Here’s a video of the results:

For demonstration purposes, the video shows the patterns changing quite quickly, but in actuality, the pattern speeds vary between slow and serene and speedy and frantic.  I’m really happy with the results, and this is one of my favorite series so far.

The finished pieces are 5″ x 7″ x 2″ and will be individually numbered:

I plan to make a batch of these in various other colours; and although I really like the monochromatic look, I’m sure an RGB version isn’t too far off.

I’m also considering getting a custom PCB made based on this design so I can easily scale it to bigger grids for bigger fixtures.

In the meantime, for anyone interested in a fully assembled piece, I’m also offering these at my on-line shop.

A big move was finalizing the framework for the 3.xx series, by reducing the “Electric Window (iii)” design from two screens to one:

In an effort to standardize “editions” of my lighting fixtures, the “Electric Window 3.xx” series is based around one or more 24 x 16 pixel displays, in a small enclosure of some sort.  While the hardware design will remain fairly constant, the software and enclosures will vary.  The pattern shown above is an autonomous drawing program, like an electronic Etch-a-Sketch on auto-pilot.

[ build details after the break ]

Other patterns are based on randomly filling the screen with various sized shapes or lines, then randomly emptying the screen again.

Dots:

Squares:

Bigger squares:

. . . and so on.

Of course there’s lots of other content, including Space Invaders

I’m constantly developing new content for these screens, so some new video documentation is overdue.

As the original “Electric Window (iii)” incorporated a wireless weather sensor, I’m planning to add sensors to the “Electric Window 3.xx” series for sensor-driven content as well.

Before going any further regarding what’s to come, let’s take a look at the current state of the hardware.

Here’s a pic of the simplest circuit needed to drive the screen, mounted on the inside of the frame’s back panel — after wrestling with the annoying black foam that comes with the frames when I purchase them:

The circuit is simply an Arduino-enabled microprocessor and the necessary support components (osciallator and capacitors), and a connector for interfacing with the screen.

I’ll admit it’s not the prettiest arrangement, and I’m torn between using/modifying the frame backs as they come, and living with ugly results, or fabricating my own back panels for an aesthetic advantage.  Making my own back panels would look better, but produce more waste as I’d simply be chucking out the original panels that come w/ the frames.  So which is more important: reducing waste or making the inside of these pieces look better?  I’d love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments . . . Of course this is a moot point for enclosures I build from scratch.

After the circuit board is mounted, the screen is mounted above it and the power cables are routed:

It just fits! Below you can see the connector snuggly stuck between the two boards:

cifo, who’s also working w/ these screens, has a great solution in building the screen connectors right onto his controller board so it attaches directly to the screen.  You can see a pic of this here; definately an option I want to explore, along w/ standardizing the circuit design so I can have circuit boards professionally fabricated.

The finishing touch is the individually numbered label to mark the piece’s place in the series:

As I develop new content, I’m also working on a content-updating system that will easily allow owners of my light pieces to upload new software as it becomes available . . . more on that as I iron out the details.  In the meantime, I’d love to hear your comments regarding the ability of owners to update content of these device to extend their function and amusement.

The audio is straight from a drum machine, triggering the video in real time which is done in Processing; this initial draft shows that this is just the tip of the iceberg for what’s possible . . .