For the second term of my physical computing class, we had to create a small project using the ATTINY microcontroller!

In order to keep things simple, I decided to build a small circuit that lights up an LED when someone is moving thanks to a Passive Infrared Sensor. Next step would to trigger a relay so that for example I could have a light turn on just when I'm close to it!

As always, I started by using the Arduino as the power source and the programmer of the ATTINY controller. To do this, we followed a nice tutorial available here: http://highlowtech.org/?p=1695

Prototyping

The PIR sensor used.
It just needs 5V, GND and the actual pin where it will send 5V if it gets triggered

For the second term of my workshops in creative coding class, I realized an installation where, among other things, the audience could explore a map of tweets using a joystick controller.

I worked very hard on the software part, which was made in openframeworks and nodejs, and just one day before the popup I quickly printed, soldered and assembled the final box hosting the arduino, the joystick controller and the two buttons (to zoom in, out).

Run, don't walk!

Due to the simplicity of the connections, I didn't make any schematics. Instead, I just hacked together everything as quickly as I could! :D

Here are some screengrabs from Fusion 360, where I modeled the enclosure:

Fast and dirty render from Fusion

And some pics of the final assembled and printed piece:

The two yellow buttons are used to zoom-in or out

The joystick exits with 5 cables, GND, VCC, x and y axis and the joystick pressed pin

Tons of things have happened in the last months.. The most important one being that I'm currently in London doing an MA in Computational Arts!

Maybe I'll write an article about it, but as for now you can just have a sneak peek here: http://doc.gold.ac.uk/compartsblog/index.php/work/popup2018/

No, let's get back into topic. It has been some time since I started programming, and I changed my workflow and IDEs many times, adapting to different fields.. web development, python, realtime stuff with openframeworks..

È passato ormai quasi un anno da quando ho iniziato ad interessarmi concretamente al mondo della Data Visualization, seguendo un breve corso alla RUFA intitolato Open and Big Data Visualization: L’estetica dei flussi.

Da quel corso di 8 lezioni ne è poi uscito fuori un piccolo spunto per il mio progetto finale, “I trasporti”, che ho iniziato a portare con me anche dopo la presentazione finale del corso. Sono un pendolare praticamente fin da quando ho finito il liceo e ho sempre preferito il trasporto pubblico a quello privato. Non per chissà quale vezzo “comunitario”, ma semplicemente perché viaggiare sui mezzi mi ha sempre dato la possibilità di ottimizzare il mio tempo: leggendo, studiando – spesso lavorando – durante quei piccoli intermezzi tra un pit stop e l’altro. Il progetto che presento qui è frutto proprio di questo: 1 anno di lavoro inframmezzato, spezzato, realizzato a tratti tra mille gadget tecnologici diversi (laptop, tablet, smartphone, carta e penna..) tra mille lavori diversi, sul caro Freccia Nera Velletri – Roma. Nasceva come visualizzazione interattiva orientata al web (D3js), più focalizzata sulla tecnica che su altro. Poi si è evoluto con me, dopo che ho iniziato a conoscere sempre di più il mondo del design generativo, fino ad approdare su un software totalmente diverso: Houdini. Così è fuggita via l’interattività a favore di una maggiore libertà durante il processo creativo. Ne è cambiata anche la finalità: un lavoro un po’ più improntato sull’informare e comunicare piuttosto che sul trasmettere.

Hi guys!

Just to let you know, this year we’re facing an extremely hot summer here in Italy (50 degrees in some cities!), so as you would image sitting all day in front of a screen is getting quite challenging.. nonetheless, I’m still too excited about learning Houdini to stop my researches! This time I picked up an old time classic from the interactive world, the Kinect , and I wanted to push it a little forward. I wanted to import point cloud animations into Houdini, and manipulate them in all the magical ways that this software lets us do.

Exporting .ply from Openframeworks

As a first step, you need to create the point cloud animation by recording the kinect data.

I’m using OpenFrameworks in order to connect with the Kinect and export a binary .ply file for each frame received.

On my github repo you’ll find the code, which is very easy and mostly grabbed online and from the examples of the official library. A .ply file contains a header and a list of x,y,z position for each point. The header structure can be seen from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLY_(file_format) and the list of points in our case was supplied as stream of bytes (see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20400128/how-to-write-a-file-byte-by-byte-using-c)).

It’s been quite a long time since I’ve been using Atom for developing nodejs apps, but a few months ago I’ve decided to migrate to Visual Studio Code, and I must say that I don’t regret this decision. Code is faster, has a tons of extensions and great support for many different languages.

Last but not least, typing code . in terminal in order to open Code in the current directory is really cool. 😁

So when I came back to openframeworks and all its XCode thing I felt a little overwhelmed, as if there were too many things before me and the code that I was writing. XCode is a very powerful IDE, but sometimes you need the comfort of something a little lighter.. which brings us back to the title:

Using openframeworks without XCode

It’s really easier than you may think, since OF supports make files on macOs!

I have to thanks a random sfpc repository I found which documented the process of using Sublime Text instead of XCode (I’ve lost the correct link, it’s somewhere in their github).

Here’s my gist showing how to do it with Visual Studio Code (but really, you should be able to reproduce the steps in most text editors).

This first file is an example of a c_cpp_properties.json file and below it you’ll find all the instructions.