Sensor Workshop
120 Years of Musical Instruments Feb 4,2004
A history of 120 years of electronic musical instruments...
Affective computing and physiological sensors Feb 5,2004
Rosalind Picard's affective computing research group at MIT is a good place to go if you're interested in any kind of physiological sensing. They're also doing some interesting thinking about how physical state reflects human affect.
Bill Buxton Articles Feb 4,2004
Less Is More (More or Less): Speculations about the Design of Computers - Bill Buxton's essay on the weaknesses of general-purpose computers, and why application-specific, networked appliances are a better idea. See also Bill Buxton's site, where all of his writings can be found.
Blueink Feb 5,2004
Blueink Jen Lewin's project page, including her thesis project, Butterfly. Jen's documentation of her work is very thorough, including descriptions, schematics, code, notes on gears and motors, and much much more.
BodyNet Jun 24,2004
This IBM research article describes using the human body as a transmission element in a data network (very personal area networking), and seems to pre-date this Microsoft patent by at least four years.... Olin Shivers' 1993 presentation on bodyNets is the earliest I've found so far.
Exhibit Research Feb 5,2004
Exhibit Research - Kevin Walker's site, containing lots of notes, essays, reports, and interviews related to exhibit design. Also includes many technology links on things like smart glass, robotics, and more.
Galvanic Skin Response Nov 20,2006
Björn Hartmann and colleagues made this galvanic skin response sensor based on Michael Sung and Vadim Gerasimov's circuit design.
Graspable User Interfaces Feb 4,2004
Graspable User Interfaces - George Fitzmaurice's Ph.D Thesis. Explores the idea of multiple physical objects as handles for elements in a computing environment, as opposed to a single physical object (the mouse).
Make your own ECG Aug 25,2003
Here's a site detailing how to build a simple homemade one. I wouldn't use it to diagnose a heart murmur, but if you're interested in biometrics, it's a nice place to start.
Mark Tilden's Robots Feb 4,2004
An interview with Mark Tilden about his analog robots, by Kevin Walker...
Natalie Jeremijenko Feb 5,2004
I don't even particularly like robots, but I love the way this project visualizes invisible information (concentrations of toxins on a given site) using a technology that has been domesticated from military and industrial use into a child's toy.... This assignment, given to her design students, has grown into an excellent source of information on how various products are made, including chemical, material, labor, and political issues involved.
Neurosky Feb 20,2006
From their site: "NeuroSky, a fabless semiconductor/module company, has developed a non-invasive neural sensor and signal processing technology that converts brainwaves and eye movements into useful electronic signals to communicate with a wide range of electronic devices, consoles, and computers." So far they haven't got any links to an actual product for sale up.
Public Air Quality Indicator Sep 17,2005
The public air quality indicator is a public display that indicates the quality of the air in a city. It's highly localized, and a good example of an ambient display that has some practical use. The details of its construction are online and openly available as well
Raffi Krikorian Mar 30,2004
Raffi Krikorian is doing a lot of interesting work related to physical computing and networked objects, and has a lot of valuable links and notes online. His mehack blog is " A weblog devoted to taking it apart, learning from it, and putting it back together again".
Random Numbers and Physical Computing May 24,2004
Your consciousness is a great leveller for the sensors that are your eyes, ears, skin, nose, and taste buds When you move a photoresistor from one room to another, your readings will be totally different, and all of a sudden, you have to re-calculate what is "average" and what constitutes the lighting change that you want.... Even when we think we're being very regular physically, we're off by a number of milliseconds each time Most of the time when you use a random function in a program, it's because you're trying to duplicate or mimic the randomness of the real world.
Responsive Environments Group Mar 3,2004
The Responsive environments group at MIT has done a number of interesting projects: parasitic power from shoes, various radio-connected sensors, and more.
ScratchRobot Feb 5,2004
ScratchRobot a robot that converts emails into sound by scratching them on a turntable.
Seeing with the tongue Jun 3,2004
Neuroscientists in Montreal, Denmark, and the US have developed a Braille-like tongue display of 144 pixels, that stimulates the visual areas of the brain through the tongue.... It may be impractical now, but it's an interesting approach to the problem of providing vision replacement or augmentation through technology.
SenseTable Feb 5,2004
SenseTable: A Wireless Object Tracking Platform for Tangible User Interfaces A paper from the MIT Media Lab: "In this paper we present a system that electromagnetically tracks the positions and orientations of multiple wireless objects on a tabletop display surface." AudioPad is an application of the senseTable that makes music based on the position of objects on a table.
Simmetry Touch Screen Module Aug 19,2003
A small (approx. 6" diagonal?") touch screen, controllable from a microcontroller.
Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms Feb 4,2004
Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms - Hiroshi Ishii and Brygg Ullmer's paper explaining the ideas behing the Tangible Media group at MIT.
The Stanford Interactive Workspaces Project Feb 4,2004
The Stanford Interactive Workspaces Project - a large scale project to integrate collaborative software tools into all aspects of a workspace.
The Tapper Feb 5,2004
The Tapper acoustic tracking ouf touch across a hard surface, by Joe Paradiso's group at the Media Lab.
The Thimbletron Feb 5,2004
The Thimbletron Thimble-based hand MIDI controller.
Touch Screen Technologies Feb 5,2004
A decent white paper on the basics of touch screen technologies. Thanks to Sasha Harris-Cronin for the link.
Tricorder Aug 19,2003
A homemade 3-D joystick project using a rubber ball, three small joysticks, and three bungee cords. Build your own!