NMD 102

02/14/14

Moonshine

Moonshine is a simple game I made while experimenting with the MIT programming language, Scratch. The assignment was to design a game that the user can play without a keyboard or a mouse.

Scratch has a few built-in ‘blocks’ (functions) that allow you to utilize the webcam in a variety of ways. In this game, the user simply swipes his/her hand over the missiles to destroy them. Bombs spawn from the top of the screen and work their way downward towards the players base. The green health bar denotes the health of the base currently. This bar will progress from green at full health to black at one health left. If a missile gets past the user when the bar is black, the game is over and a high score is tracked.

If you’re on a device with a webcam and want to check it out you can click the image below or follow this link. Read the instructions on the right then click the green flag to begin.


Moonshine_Pic

12/10/13

Fun With Arduino

Arduino_3

This is the famous Arduino. If you haven’t heard of this wonderful machine yet I would highly suggest doing some research on the topic, or at the very least heading over to their site at http://arduino.cc/

Arduino_2

Here I have started to wire the pieces of a simple chord-synthesizer together. This project was coupled with Max/MSP and used several buttons and a slider to play the root, third and fifth of a given note at the users discretion.

Arduino_1

I purchased a starter pack from sparkfun.com which gives you access to a small sample of sensors, wires, resistors and of course the microcontroller. The learning curve isn’t very steep and the possibilities are only limited by your budget and imagination. Pretty neat stuff.

12/10/13

NMD 102 Final: Raindrops

NMD102_Raindrops

For my NMD102 final project, I decided to engineer a ‘virtual poster’. I generally sleep much better during a rainy night, so I improvised a simple Processing sketch that would mimic a rain-storm. This particular sketch uses a light sensor built into the Arduino to increase or decrease the amount of drops on the screen. As the amount of light in the room fades, more drops will appear and vice-versa. The background also fades between a sunny habitat and a rainy one, depending on the amount of light available. With a dedicated computer and a small projector, it would be possible to project this application onto a window or a wall and produce a similar feeling to the one I always get on rainy days.