Weeks 13 - The Sophomore Album & Final Act

Here is a list of our six sensors and what each did with the revised mapping in [ ]:

- Copper coin glove + coin circuits: Binary coded to change playlists ---> [Removed the glove]
- Photo cell attached to glove: Swap songs ---> [Paint with Jitter and change playlists according to frequency of painting]
- Right elbow conductive foam + copper tape: Right channel volume ---> ["Scratching"]
- Left elbow conductive foam + copper tape: Left channel volume ---> [Cross-fading between two songs]
- Left armpit conductive foam + copper tape: Playback speed ---> [Frequency modulation effect]
- Right armpit conductive foam + copper tape: Echo (the effect was not giving us the feedback we wanted with our loops, so we disconnected that sensor reading.) ---> [Master Volume]



I changed how I processed the loops and created loop pairs so that there would be a beat loop and a rhythm loop that matched. We also cut off the Copper coin glove sensor because John managed to code an alternate method of playlist changing. By "painting" with the photo cell, the patch takes readings that counts how many times the user painted in ten seconds. Painting 1-2 times would result in playlist 1, 3-4 would trigger playlist 2, and 5-6 times would initiate playlist 3.

It was hard to remember these combinations and in the presentation, the class did not get to see the painted result because we were using two laptops to run the patches and had netsend/netreceive to send the paint data to the painting laptop, and the netsend/netreceive connection got disconnected. Gordon pointed out that it would have been easier for the user to have the coins and change the playlist. Completely agree with that but like I mentioned in the previous post, having those coins on the body was an easy way out and we wanted to try another approach that worked with "beyond arms reach".

If I had to redo this project from ground zero, I would improve the harness design. Each of us had little knowledge of sewing, and didn't know the basics of tailoring something so custom. For a first try it was great, but for a second round I would use different elbow and armpit strap material. After the first presentation, My elbow joints were red and blotchy because of the abrasive material.

Another improvement I would look at is the durability of the foam. Initially, we doubled up on the foam, but found that it was really uncomfortable. So we went with one layer for the rest of the design and never thought about durability until the first presentation when I noticed that our readings were weakening. By the second presentation, the sensors were on their last performance. Like many other groups that used conductive foam, the foam just wore out due to all the bending.

Perhaps I would move away from foam and use accelerometers like the Nintendo Wii controller and we would add a bit more spice to how the GoGoDJ might be used. It would also have been nice to have worked with the RFID tags that we initially wanted to use to change our playlists.

Overall, my experience with GoGoDJ was fantastic. It opened me to DJ culture and music even more, working with cheap sensors that were so sensitive in control was amazing, and being able to revise our idea was a great bonus.

Weeks 12 - The First Album

We completed our sensor the night before the first presentation and agreed to meet up a few hours before class the next day.

Here is a list of our six sensors and what each did:

- Copper coin glove + coin circuits: Binary coded to change playlists
- Photo cell attached to glove: Swap songs
- Right elbow conductive foam + copper tape: Right channel volume
- Left elbow conductive foam + copper tape: Left channel volume
- Left armpit conductive foam + copper tape: Playback speed
- Right armpit conductive foam + copper tape: Echo (the effect was not giving us the feedback we wanted with our loops, so we disconnected that sensor reading.)

GoGoDJ Gallery

1230 hrs:

I arrived on campus and met up with John and Sherry. John's patch had been working with pseudo sensor readings and this was our first test with all the sensors and patch. We were confident in our design and implementation, so we were comfortable testing this late. In all honesty though, performing initial tests on the day of the presentation should never be done.

I gave John the sound loops I edited to use in the patch. Their sound quality was top notch outside of Max.

1300 hrs:

After a few tweaks, John initialized all the loops and the patch was up and reading the sensors. We now had to make adjustments to the numbers coming in so that they would properly scale to the patch.

The loops sounded fine on the laptop speakers in the mezzanine. This turned out to be an obvious lack of quality control.

1430 hrs:

After the tweaks and John's bouncing around to other groups helping them with their patches, I decide that it would be best to don the harness and put the sensors through usage tests. We go through each sensor again and calibrate the numbers a couple more times. Things are looking good.

1600 hrs:

Our right armpit sensor and its accompanying echo effect were not giving us a desired result, so we decided to cut that demo from the presentation and work with five sensors instead of six.

Still wearing the harness, I quickly put on the rest of my disguise and I note that the harness is still quite comfortable and that I could have taken it off at anytime and slip it back on again, unlike Cody Church who had his sensors taped/wrapped onto his body.

We pack our stuff and moved to the room to set up the coin circuits that we needed to change playlists.

1830 hrs:



The patch was being run off Windows XP through Apple's BootCamp software on my MacBook Pro and because the drivers and XP are just raw without any third party software to give easier control to external display settings, getting the projector to talk to the notebook was difficult. We couldn't figure out how to mirror the desktop so after a few minutes the projector connection would be severed and our sound would cut off and John would have to reconnect and I could perform again.

I don't understand why the AV system has to make the audio inputs not work if the projector has no video coming in. The audio should work by itself and the video should work by itself. Audio Only, Video Only, Audio & Video. Simple.

We were reluctant to take the comment of implementing the coins onto our body to change playlists because of a video Greg showed us where there was this guy who basically made a one man band by putting touch sensors all over his body and played himself like an instrument. Greg noted that it was running along the lines of cheesiness and we agreed. Putting the coins around the room gave the touching of another object some meaning. Also as the one wearing the harness, I pretended that I had coins on me to touch and it just felt silly.

So we were challenged for the next week to fix our sound quality, find another way to change playlists, and if we could remove the gloves to help make the sensor more transparent.