Prisme

During this summer, at the same time I built my workshop, I worked with my wife on an artistic project.

It’s a huge polyhedron made in a single piece of Oak on the saw mill. We called it the “Prisme”. This piece was exhibited during the summer in our region along with Anne’s other works. It served as a starting point for a workshop with the visitors.

More of this project can be found here : matieredeschoses.com/prisme/

Up v2

About 4 years ago, I build this first version of Up for the FICAM festival in Meknes (Morocco). As I am more and more asked to exhibit this installation, I decided to rebuild it in a more robust and reliable way. This new version was shown for the first time in Paris at Forum des Images for the Tout petits Cinéma festival 2013.

Basically each step of a staircase is equipped with an infrared emitter and an ir receiver. When someone is putting his foot down on a step the ir beam is stopped and the receiver sends its new status to the main controller box. This box generates MIDI signals that can be played by any type of MIDI synth.

I completely revisited the technical aspect of the project: while in the first version, each of the 16 receivers sent their status through a dedicated wire (which ends up in quite a big cable in the end), now they each embed a small microcontroller (Attiny 45) and are daisy chained. This means that each sensor is sending its data over the SPI protocol to the next one until it has reached the main controller (Arduino). With this design, I ended up with only one 5-wires cable linking the sensors together.

Other improvements of this version are : solid plastic cases for the emitters and sensors, nice enclosing box for the main controller and better MIDI integration.

Anyone interested in exhibiting this installation for an event ? Contact lab212.

Some pictures of the build process:

Wooden toys for Christmas

Remember the wooden toy horses I made last year ? I decided to renew the experience of making DIY presents. Some Do Nothing Machines and simple marble skill games made out of ash wood. But also this answer dices made with my girlfriend (cypress wood).

This small presents have been well received and I still have some for birthdays…

Wooden cabin prototype

This summer during my holidays in Ardèche I started a cabin project with my friend Fred. We designed and built a 9 square meter wooden isolated cabin. It’s intended to receive people even during winter.

Fred has a mobile saw mill and he debited all the Douglas pine wood for the project. We then started to build the structure and the outside cladding. Later we made the windows and the door in my workshop. The assembly on the client’s site took place last December under falling snow…

Next step will be to think about a more industrial way to build this cabins.

Here is a timelapse of the assembly on site.

Lab212’s installations through France

During October in a lot of cities of France a special event is taking place during one night. It’s called “Nuit Blanche” for sleepless night. It primarly took place in Paris in 2001. The goal of this event is to invest the city with a lot of artpieces that work well at night. Over the years, more and more cities in France have they own “Nuit Blanche” and this year Lab212 were invited in some of them all over France : Bordeaux, Metz, Amiens, La Motte Servolex…

Here are some pictures of the events I went to.

In Bordeaux I worked on Kikko’s project called Bruit de fond. It’s a probe that moves up and down a light according to the deepness of a lake measured with a sonar. While the probe is moving on the water surface, a camera is taking long exposure shots to reveal the lake bed as light lines. I worked on the mechanics and electronics of the project, machining and building a lot of parts of the probe.

Find out more on the dedicated website.

In La Motte Servolex, for their “Nuit de la Création”, Stop-it was exposed for the first time in its new version. Stop-it doesn’t require a drawn grid anymore to stick the post-its on since the grid is now video projected. This improvement sound simple but it brings a lot :
– the light is perfectly uniform and improves the color detection
– the grid is adjustable in size through the software
– we have a play head precisely showing what notes are being read
– and the installation is now way easier to carry around

The setup shown on this pictures looks a bit wobbly but in fact worked very well relative to the 2 hours of time I was given to install 🙂

Summer project: solid oak kitchen

This kitchen was planned since a long time, but I managed to free some time this last weeks to make it real. It’s designed to fit in my small parisian kitchen but also to be suitable for any futur kitchen. Made out of solid oak wood, I tried to build it with the most precision I could get with my tools.

The wood came rough sawn and I had to plane it on this small planner/jointer my father gave me. This tool came from an old combination wood working machine and I had to adapt a motor on in to use it independently.

To cut the tenons, I added a new mode on my Arduino controlled Jig that allow me to give in the tenon width and the offset of the first cut and then to cut them all with the same settings.

Arduino Controlled Table Saw Box Joint Jig

Some weeks ago I equipped my workshop with a very good table saw (from the Austrian manufacturer Felder) and since I discovered this great website and in particular this jig, I just had to build my own. Due to my experience with stepper motors, I decided to use one of them grabbed from a scanner in combination with an easyDriver and an Arduino (an old mini I had left). I tried to keep the design as simple as possible without making use of some special hardware but the precision of the whole thing is quite good: about 0.03 mm.

I put the Arduino code here and the schematics for the board I built is here.

Au delà de 1 m/s

Au delà de 1 m/s (Beyond 1 m/s) is an art installation from Albertine Meunier materializing the speed of the Internet. Every 30 seconds Google is asked for the last results of the keywords “je pense” (I think), the machine then rise one marble per result. The device is autonomous and directly connected to the Internet through an Arduino Ethernet.
More on this project here : www.albertinemeunier.net/au-dela-de-1m-s/
and thanks to woodgears.ca for his very inspiring Marble Machine (among a lot of other stuff…)

L’empreinte du mouvement @ Cité de l’architecture

This project is a piece for the exhibition Circuler at the Cité de l’architecture in Paris. It was designed by Catherine Ramus at Orange labs. I worked on the lamps modifications and the integration of the projectors. An Arduino is used to simulate the clicks of the projectors’s remote controls to launch the videos when the whole piece is switched on.

More in this video starting at 2:30.

Christmas is coming

Wooden pull horses on wheels.

Hand made. Beech wood. Approx. 8 x 6 cm.