May 2009 – Modprobe

Mapping Festival, first shots

From the 8th to the 17th of may, the mapping festival invades some of the cultural places of Geneva.
This great event allow us to discover, and sometimes experience, lots of nice “stuff”.
This year, there was the reactable, an amazing multitouch table.
The UI and performance are really sweet.
The first purpose of this apparel isn’t being a nice multitouch table. It’s a music instrument, able to produce a lot of different sounds, from different sources, parsed by many filters.

I think they made a really nice work. We were both astonished by the demo. And in the same time excited about our current project.

Very entertaining…

Later in the night, I dropped by the Usine, more specifically le zoo, to watch the VJ battle. To say the truth, it was boring before the crew I know started the show ! Look at the picture, two Disco-Saint-Nicolas landing directly from the 80’s.

The day after was a sunday. I quickly went to module8 workshop. It was interesting, I’d love to try it now. And I’d like to try something like a midi-theremin with it. Maybe the Disco-Saint-Nicolas from the 80’s would be interested in being my guinea pig (direct translation of “cobaye” with my aÃ¯Phone).

My advice: Enjoy the mapping.

Flock test 02

Just a quick update to my flock system.
I added attractor/repulsor and wind forces. In this example, the movement of the mouse triggers a repulsor.

To make things interesting visually, each boid is the head of a chain of spring, and each chain of spring in turn drives a ribbon curve.

To do: Improve the visuals. Play with perlin noise.

Howto change the Roomba 560’s brush deck motor

2 years ago I bought a Roomba 560. It’s quite good at doing what I paid it for, so last month when the main brush stopped working I was really disappointed.Â It is hard to go back to manual vacuuming once you’ve experienced the bliss of robotic cleaning.

Anyway, I decided not to transform this robot in a other “useless” toy. Even if the desire was strong: I could program my own code pattern and art, install a camera, play with other sensors, etc.
Arg, it’s hard to neglect all the fancy robot-dreams I have in my head !

So, I found an electric motor with the same specs, RS385SH for only 2.5$. Compared to the 60$ to exchange the whole deck, without shipping fees, it’s almost free.

This motor is a little shorter so I had to shift the handle andÂ onlyÂ use one screw. The axis is also a bit long. I had to cut it to make it fit in the complication box.

The repair seems to work well even if the robot’s noise is a bit louder.
My only advice if you try to do the same is to be extra careful when extracting the motor’s cogwheel.