GridEye infrared array: Advanced low cost sensors
The Arduino microcontroller platform is a popular prototyping platform. It can be used to easily extend software applications with custom sensors and actuators, such as buttons, rotary encoders or distance sensors. Besides these sensors which use simple digital and analog IO Ports the Arduino microcontroller (ATmega328) also offers more sophisticated buses for data transmission such as I2C, UART and SPI.
The infrared array sensor used for this project (AMG8851) for example uses such a standard communication protocol (I2C) and can be easily connected to the Arduino. In this project we will try to combine the wireless version of the Arduino called panstamp with the low resolution thermographic camera for distributed sensing. We will explore its fitness for outdoor scenarios. Furthermore, we explore standard gesture recognition methods provided by the GR Toolkit using this sensor. Depending on the challenges we will encounter, we will attempt to create multiple wireless modules which stage user behavior in a public space. For module, interface and interaction design we will collaborate with the project group “Designing content for narrative, embedded devices in public space”.
For participating students this projects includes:
- software development based on and building upon an existing JAVA SWT application
- implementing software for the low resolution infrared sensor using the Arduino IDE or similar
- using Processing or Java to interface with the Gesture Recognition Toolkit (GRT) via OSC
- learning about gesture recognition methods by using an high level library
- dealing with code management systems
- analysis of potential strategies for wireless event handling
- testing ‘in the wild’
- creative use of technology
- understanding how to stage users in public settings for the applications use case
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