You can touch people from all over the world with kindness, but now you can use something called the Tactilu to literally touch people, even when you’re miles apart.
The Tactilu is a wrist device that lets its wearers communicate and “touch” each other, but only on the wrist for obvious reasons. Its described by its maker as a bracelet for remote tactile communication.
The Tactilu is powered by an Arduino Pro mini microcontroller and a custom circuit board with a Bluetooth module. It connects and communicates to another device via Bluetooth or through the Internet to deliver the other person’s “touch” using actuators mounted on the inside of the bracelet.
It’s still a work in progress, so expect to see more changes to its shape and form before the final version’s eventual release.
The Tactilu was made by Poland-based design studio panGenerator together with the Polish bureau of Cheil for ITAKA Foundation.
There are lots of articles online speculating about how Apple can create an instant game console by increasing the integration between the Apple TV and iOS devices. It’s an interesting idea, but so far we’ve seen that Apple is slow to embrace its gaming community. iOS game developer Rolocule Games took matters into its own hands and came up with… Wii Sports. Or one of the games in Wii Sports.
Using AirPlay, the Apple TV can mirror your iOS device’s display on your TV or monitor to let you play on a bigger screen. But Rolocule Games went a step further. Aside from letting you play on a big screen, its app Motion Tennis lets you use your iOS device itself as the motion controller. You get the idea: Swing your iOS device and your avatar swings his racket. Swing your device hard and you just might end up with a costly accident.
Motion Tennis is already available on the iTunes App Store for $8 (USD). You need to have an Apple TV as well as a fairly modern iOS device to make it work, but I can wholeheartedly recommend the game… if you’re trapped in 2006.
Still, it’s a glimpse at what a powerful “mobile console” could be like. Imagine if the next PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo (or Google or Apple) game system was just that: a small device. A console, controller, secondary display, media center, digital store and game library in your pocket. And you can make calls with it too! Wouldn’t that be awesome?
I’m not sure how long it would take or if we’d ever get such a device. Then again, if you told me five years ago that I’d be able to play Final Fantasy Tactics, Baldur’s Gate, a digital version of Magic: The Gathering and a new XCOM game in one portable device I wouldn’t have believed you either.
Earlier this year we saw AirHarp, a virtual harp that uses the Leap gesture controller, letting the user make music by playing an imaginary harp. The developer behind the AirHarp recently introduced a similar program but for a more popular instrument. The AirBeats will actually make air drummers productive. Or at least expose them for the frauds they are.
The AirBeats is very intuitive to use. The instruments you’ve chosen are displayed on the screen. All you have to do is tap in midair as if those instruments were arranged in front of you. You can also record and replace instruments just by pointing and swiping in midair. It is incredibly responsive, whether you use your hands or a pair of drumsticks or even pencils.
Developer Handwavy said AirBeats will be available on Airspace – that’s Leap’s app store – on July 22, 2013. I love how it’s a more physical way of making digital music. Maybe artists can even use it live so their audience can “play” along with them.
Heineken is setting out to create a wave on social media with their newest advertising ploy: interactive beer bottles. “Interactive” might sound a bit misleading, since all they do is light up when the bottle is lifted.
So how does it work? Each bottle has a green plastic base screwed at the bottom. This base has been fitted with a wireless sensor and LED lights. The former detects when the bottle has been lifted, causing the latter to sparkle. The sensor also causes the LED lights to flash in sync with the music, if there happens to be any loud tunes playing where you are.
Jeremy Brook, who’s Heineken’s head of digital and media innovation, foresees that these types of advertising will lead to a “massive area of growth and creativity for brands.” He adds: “It’s not yet totally defined, but it will be.”
The idea for the interactive beer bottle was thought up by digital agency Tribal DDB.
Bicycle riders in New York now have a new weapon in the commuting wars. The CitiBike Smart Helmet will show you the way to the nearest CitiBike docking station. That’s pretty handy. Maybe I should say heady. It is a helmet after all.
The Carrera foldable helmet used for this project is embedded with LED strip lights, a FLORA accelerometer, a compass and a FLORA GPS system. All of this is used to guide the rider to the nearest bike docking station in the city, using blinking lights in the periphery of the rider’s vision to show them the way. The colorful LEDs on top serve no purpose other than to provide a cool light show, though.
That should save people a lot of time and effort. This project comes from Tyler and Justin Cooper, who have provided all the instructions to make your own CitiBike Smart Helmet if you are inclined. Pretty neat.
No other art form transacts with us the way literature can. It’s very accessible yet it demands and invites us to add depth to the world and the ideas it conjures. Devin Montgomery tries to capture the joy of discovery and exploration that we get from reading with his unique invention. He calls it the Midnight Clock. It’s a functional timepiece, but it also has a secret. If you follow the riddle engraved on its body, you’ll find a hidden book compartment.
The Midnight Clock is made from either birch of bamboo, with a shatterproof acrylic cover and a quartz movement. To reveal the hidden compartment, you have to remove four pegs along with the acrylic cover in the right order. Naturally, you’ll need to decipher the riddle to find out the right order. It’s not hard to solve, but that’s not really the point of the clock.
Pledge at least $85 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a Midnight Clock as a reward. Naturally once you solve the riddle the Midnight Clock’s magic is drained, but I prefer to think of it as a functional and very creative gift wrap. I think it’s a good way of foreshadowing the wonders that await the recipient in the gift itself.
I do find it somewhat of a missed opportunity though. I think that art is man’s attempt to express that which cannot otherwise be shared using words. Which is why I find the writer a very funny and also valiant class of artist: he uses the very thing that he hopes to transcend. It’s like a vaccine, not because it cures something but because of the audacity of its composition. So wouldn’t it be funny if instead of a clock, you had a book that, when read in a certain way, opens up to reveal another book?
We have accessed music in many different ways. It’s the 21st century after all. And now UK-based communications agency Uniform has devised a new way to access music. With their interactive Postcard Player.
These music playing postcard prototypes are printed with electronics using conductive inks. These allow users to interact with the flat printed circuit. The postcards can be docked into the Postcard Player to play music. You can control music by touching the paper postcards in the same way you would a touchscreen. Each card has tracks with printed buttons to pause and remix the music. Though it appears that the music itself is stored in the docking station, and the printed circuit only serves to identify which track to play and to control playback.
The Postcard Player is being shown off at Design Museum’s 2013 Designs of the Year show through July 7th, where it is showing everyone what you can do by printing electronic circuits onto unconventional surfaces. Pretty cool. Imagine getting a postcard, then docking it to hear a voice message and a song. Sure, it’s a novelty, but an interesting one.
Now you can take a trip to numerous destinations without having to leave the comforts of your home and without spending a single cent. How? With Google’s Street View, which has now been updated with 1,001 new destinations and places that were previously not available.
Google hasn’t released the full list of new locations, but they did highlight certain locations that will appeal to hikers, armchair travelers, and of course, actual travelers.
These new places include generous views of Singapore’s zoo, a peek inside the interiors of concert halls in Canada, and tours of the Mark Twain House and Mark Twain Museum in Hartford, Connecticut. Other must-see locations include Mexico City’s Chapultepec Park, Copenhagen’s canals, and Spain’s Seville Cathedral.
A while back, I wrote about the QuNeo, a reasonably priced, multitouch music controller, packed with triggers and modifiers. The folks at Keith McMillen Instruments were kind enough to set me up with a QuNeo so I could put it to the test.
The QuNeo itself is a lightweight and compact USB/MIDI/OSC controller, measuring just 9-1/2″ (w) x 7-1/4″ (h). It’s just over 1/4″ thick and weighs under a pound, so it can easily be tossed in your backpack if you like to travel and perform. It’s also been designed to be spill-proof, an added bonus if you like to have the occasional drink while playing.
The controller itself offers 16 touch-sensitive trigger pads, as well as nine virtual sliders, two virtual wheel controls and 17 additional programmable buttons. It’s ideal for controlling software like Ableton Live, Traktor, and even can be used with Garage Band.
What makes the QuNeo unique is the fact that its pad can sense pressure, velocity and location, which means you can have fine-grained control over your inputs, not available with most other input devices. One of my favorite things is that you can use this technology to do things like pitch bending when you move your finger across the surface of each pad. Each input is backed by colored LEDs, which can provide visual feedback when playing or adjusting settings.
One thing you’ll quickly learn with the QuNeo is that each of its 16 drum pads is actually comprised of multiple trigger points. So you can set not just each pad to trigger a sound, but each of its four corners can act as a trigger. Though if you prefer that the entire surface of each pad trigger the same note, you can set the QuNeo into one of its drum controller modes. Each pad can be used to sense velocity so depending on how hard you hit the pad, the note or track you play can change in amplitude.
To use the QuNeo, I had to simply install the latest software (PC or Mac), select which music apps I use, and connect the device to an open USB port. There’s also a small amount of configuration in each music app to tell it which controller you want to use. I then selected which of the 16 pre-installed preset modes I wanted by pressing the mode button in the top left corner, then selecting the pad which corresponded to the preset number. Factory preset modes include predefined drum and grid modes as well as settings for popular music applications including Serato, Ableton Live, Logic Pro, Traktor, Reason, Battery, and even for controlling Korg’s iMS-20 and BeatMaker iPad synthesizers.
Once in Ableton Live 9, I was able to use the default Ableton Live presets, which provide easy access to clip playback and track recording controls. This allowed me to quickly play, mute and manipulate clips by touching the corners of each button. I was also able easily assign individual buttons, sliders and wheels as MIDI trigger using Ableton’s standard MIDI assignment interface if I wanted to override the presets.
I did find it a little tricky to assign triggers to MIDI inputs directly in Ableton, only because each one of the QuNeo’s pads outputs multiple trigger codes based on where you press. That said, you can always build a proper set of presets using the QuNeo preset editor if you want to skip Ableton’s built-in MIDI assignment screen. QuNeo’s editor allows you to create your own set of assignments for any of the triggers, providing a tremendous amount of control over how the interface is used.
Overall, I’ve found the QuNeo to be incredibly flexible and robust. Since it’s completely programmable, you can truly make it match your individual workflow, whether you’re into live performance, or are looking for a controller for studio recording.
However, with great power comes complexity. First off, you’ll definitely want to watch the video tutorials for your music software of choice up on their website. You’ll also need to really familiarize yourself with all of the presets which are listed in the manual, and then memorize which triggers are assigned to each button, slider or wheel. This isn’t a unique challenge to the QuNeo – all programmable controllers have similar constraints. Someday, I’d love for the buttons on these things to have OLED or LCD screens in them so you could see what’s assigned to each one at a glance, instead of relying on memorization.
Since I wouldn’t consider myself an expert musician by any stretch of the imagination, here’s a video showing off some QuNeo performance techniques from some talented performers:
The QuNeo lists for $199(USD) and is available from a variety of retailers, including Amazon. Keep in mind that if you want to connect the QuNeo directly to a MIDI synthesizer, you’ll need to purchase the optional MIDI expander box for about $50.
Disclosure: Keith McMillan Instruments provided the device for review in this article. However, all reviews are the unbiased views of our editorial staff, and we will only recommend products or services we have used personally, and believe will be good for our readers.
If you fancy yourself a good air hockey player, this robot may have a thing or two to teach you. It comes from Japanese researchers at Chiba University’s Namiki Lab. It is pretty good at competing against human players because the robot changes its strategy based on its human opponent’s playing style. Think you have what it takes to win?
The system is comprised of an air-hockey table, a four-axis robotic arm, two high-speed cameras, and an external PC. The robot tracks the movement of your puck and paddle, using position data from the camera images that are processed by the PC, and uses that data to figure out how to react.
You may think you are fast, but the robot is faster, tracking the game at 500 frames-per-second. This ‘bot already knows its next move when you are reacting to that last shot. It already knows your next move as it counters your last hit. It can’t be stopped. It can’t be reasoned with… Sorry. The point is that you aren’t fast from the robot’s point of view. It is playing in a kind of Matrix-style bullet-time, because it is so much faster than you.
To make it more fair for those who play this robot, researchers programmed the robot with a three-layer control system. The first layer is responsible for basic motion control of hardware. A second layer decides its short-term strategy. Things like whether it should hit the puck, defend the goal, or stay still. The third layer is all about long-term strategy and throwing it’s superiority in your face. If you are playing aggressively, it will too. If you are defensive, it will become defensive. How can you win? Well, you can kill it at least. It’ll never see that sledgehammer coming.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
