A lesson in failure

Recently I have been working on making a standard ink-jet printer free from the usual constraints of desktop printing. Looking at examples of direct to garment (DTG) printing and some of the ink-jet to 3d printer hacks out there i began tearing to pieces my desktop printer. The plan was to make the print heads as close to the bottom of the printer as i could. I also wanted to have the printer placed on wheels with the paper feed pushing the printer forwards. The result so far looks like this:

Although it looks the part so far it less than fulfills the part. I think in the build process i may have damaged the control board or something which is causing the results to be fairly unpredictable. I have been stressing and struggling with this thing for ages and have got any further. I was just about to abort the project when i started to look back over everything i had done one last time. What i realised was that although what i had first envisioned had not been realised some of the results were pretty damned nice.

Scanimations

If you don’t know what a scanimation is then here is a youtube clip by the creator -

If that has got you curious, excited or you are just plain bored then check out a little tutorial i wrote on how to create a scanimation. Please ignore the indexhibit sites style for the moment i have not had the time to style it yet.

Scanimation Tutorial.

The Sound Database

I have almost finished a project which I have been working on for the last few months so i thought it was about time I posted it up here. The website is written for Peter Cusack of CRiSAP (Creative Research in Sound Art & Performance). He approached me looking for an online database to show case sounds around major cities in the UK (which eventually turned into the world) and here is the result:  The Sound Database

There are a few bugs and usability features that I am working on but the base of the site pretty much finished.

The site uses a number of different languages and API to achieve the end result.

Languages-

• HTML
• CSS
• Javascript
• PHP
• MySQL
• AJAX
• Regular Expression

API:

• Google Maps API
• SoundManager2
• Prototype
• Scriptaculous

This is the first time i have coded something this complicated and i am fairly pleased with the results. Next i hope to add some extra functionality to the site.

1. A randomizer which pans around the world randomly playing sounds as it goes.
2. A walk though feature whereby the user can draw a line though the sounds. An icon will drive the path of the line playing sounds in close proximity. Sounds will pan to the left if they are on the left and right if they are on the right.

Rhythm bug improvements

Its been a really long tome since i wrote anything on here. This is partly because i am slacking and the mainly because i have 7 weeks left of my degree and have endless amounts of work to do. Just thought I’d take some time to document version two of the rhythm bug idea I posted a while ago.  Its a bit slow at the mo but works well. Gonna try different wheels maybe a different motor to see if i can improve its performance. I have also changed the switch to be more linear instead of rotating. This seemed to fit better into such a small space. One other detail that is worth mentioning is the humble Drawing pin. The contacts that slide across the circuit board are made from upside down drawing pins. They slide really well, conduct electricity really well and allow the contact to rotate with the movement putting less strain on the solder join – Useful little things!