Appel d’air

Lab212 were asked to design an exhibition for young children (2 to 4 years old) at Stereolux in Nantes. I worked with Pierre on his idea. Basically it’s a huge industrial fan that responds to your blow on a tiny pinwheel. It’s not a simple on/off interaction, the big fan reproduces exactly the same speed curve the user applied to the pinwheel.

I primarily worked on the technical aspect of the project. The big challenge was to drive the Altivar 3 phase frequency controller with an Arduino. I had a hard time to study the MODBUS / RS485 protocols and the Altivar documentation about MODBUS communication isn’t very DIY’er friendly…

The speed of the pinwheel is measured with an old ball mouse mechanism that sends it’s PS2 data to the Arduino (this part was easy thanks to all the libraries that exist). The Arduino on the other hand outputs the fan speed data through an RS233 – RS485 transceiver connected to the speed controller via an RJ45 cable. The Altivar also delivers enough power through the RJ45 connector to feed the Arduino and mouse board so we ended up with rather clean setup.

A dedicated website shows all the projects of this exhibition and you can read more about Appel d’air on Pierre’s website.

08/01/2013 | In Artistic, Electronics, Programming | Tags : , , , ,

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.

bruit de fonds

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 🙂

26/10/2012 | In Artistic, Experimental, Manufacturing, News | Tags : , , , , ,

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.

22/06/2012 | In Electronics, Manufacturing, Programming | Tags : , ,

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…)

07/06/2012 | In Artistic, Electronics, Manufacturing, Programming | Tags : , ,

DM02 @ Belgrade

Quelques images de DM02 installée à Belgrade au musée de l’Ethnologie. Le manque de signalétique et d’organisation a limité le passage : le dessin est loin d’être aussi rempli que prévu…

22/07/2011 | In Artistic, Electronics, Experimental, Manufacturing, News, Programming | Tags : , , , , ,

Dessins génératifs avec DM02

Test de dessin génératif codé avec un module d’interprétation Javascript intégré au logiciel de pilotage de DM02.

16/06/2011 | In Artistic, Electronics, Experimental, Manufacturing, Programming | Tags : , , ,

DM02 premiers dessins

Voici les premiers essais de dessins de ma nouvelle drawing machine. Comparée à DM01, celle-ci est beaucoup plus légère à installer : pas de câbles à tendre, seulement deux modules à fixer au mur. Un mécanisme permet de lever l’outil de dessin et la précision est améliorée. Les deux moteurs pas à pas sont pilotés par un Arduino associé à des contrôleurs LitleStepU. Un logiciel développé sous Cocoa permet d’envoyer les instructions de dessin à l’interface électronique.

Pour le moment, DM02 est plutôt conçu comme un outil pouvant servir dans différentes installations interactives.

06/06/2011 | In Artistic, Electronics, Experimental, Manufacturing, Programming | Tags : , , ,

DM01 @ FICAM 10

La Drawing Machine du lab212 a fonctionné au FICAM 2010 au Maroc !

7 mètres de large par 2 mètres 30 de haut, 7 couleurs, 30 heures d’installation et plus de 1000 gamins…

18/05/2010 | In Artistic, Electronics, Manufacturing, News, Programming | Tags : , , , , , , ,

DM01 : premiers dessins

La drawing machine du lab212 commence à dessiner. Après beaucoup d’essais d’outils de dessins : mine de graphite, pastel gras, pinceau et beaucoup d’idées de systèmes d’apport de couleurs, la solution retenue à été un feutre sur mesure qui puise son encre par capillarité directement dans un flacon.

La machine est maintenant pilotable grâce à son interface à deux manivelles en bois. Ces dernières sont solidement montées sur roulement à billes et actionnent des encodeurs numériques. Les informations de mouvement sont transmises par les airs avec la technologie xBee. À part pour les réglages, aucun ordinateur n’est utilisé.

25/04/2010 | In Artistic, Electronics, Experimental, Programming | Tags : , , ,

DM01 : premiers tests

Ça y est ! La drawing machine sur laquelle je travaille en ce moment avec Juliette au lab212 commence à se mouvoir. La mécanique semble marcher correctement. Elle est ici installée dans les locaux du lab212 dans des conditions pas encore tout à fait réelles.

Cette machine est destinée au FICAM 2010 à Meknes (Maroc) où le lab212 à été invité à nouveau cette année.

12/04/2010 | In Artistic, Electronics, Experimental, Manufacturing, Programming | Tags : , , ,