Sunday, October 16, 2011

scheuche 2.0

Beatrice Moltkau / Sander Herminghaus


Concept | SCHEUCHE 2.0 (scarecrow) is an interactive installation. It is a spatial object which defines a virtual space around itself. If this space is disturbed by someone approaching the object it responds by impulsively shielding itself to keep the viewer at a distance. Our object consists of several components which can be implemented separately. The result is a machine that registers movement in its surrounding area and translates it into a (counter) reaction by the machine. 






Implementation | A motion sensor detects a movement at ground level within an approx. four meter radius. The sensor then relays the signal to a connected micro-controller. The mirco-controller works with a program that instructs it to then send a signal to the connected external power strip. When the power strip receives the signal it turns on and activates the attached drill. A centric slider-crank mounted to the drill head alternatingly opens and closes two umbrellas.

In order to control our project without the use of a computer we used a »Arduino« micro-controller. It is a kind of mini-computer that can implement small programs. The Arduino development environment provides the software to write the programs that should run on the controller. The mix of hardware and software used by Arduino is called »physical computing«.


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