Citizen Sensor is a wearable, reconfigurable sensor pack and data contextualization system that allows users to collect, share, and understand data using wearable sensors recording environmental conditions such as carbon monoxide, light, noise pollution, and methane gas exposure among others. Users choose what to sense, and then connect with others around the world to share knowledge and experience.

Won first place in the Köln International Design Preis 2010. Featured by  Gizmodo, NY Times, Inhabitat, and more. Presented at numerous conferences including Design Indaba 2011, Fashioning Technology 2010, and others.

much much more at http://thesis.jmsaavedra.com

Essentially a wearable extension of your heart, externalized in the form of Conway’s Life. A custom circuit includes an infrared heartbeat monitor that resets the Game each time a heartbeat is detected. Heartbeat data is analyzed by a hackduino which resets an ATMega48 chip, part of Adafruit’s kit controlling Life, which is embedded in the chest of a hoodie. Conductive thread is used to connect the 16 LED matrix to the circuit board which is kept in a pocket towards the bottom of the hoodie.

Featured in MAKE and hackaday. To learn more about this project and my process, visit my weblog post and flickr set.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For my final openFrameworks project in Zach Lieberman’s setPixel course at Parsons MFA DT, I worked with Clay Ewing and Joon Moon on a public space computer vision augmented reality projection project. We undertook the challenge of “seeing” the infamous movable cube at Astor Place in NoHo, NYC. We devised a system which used a hacked PS3 eye camera and cleverly diffused infrared LEDs to “see” the cube at night. The idea was to track it with openCV, and then project onto each surface of the cube as it was rotated in real-time. Featured on hackaday.

Here is a demo vid of the app we wrote in OF for the cube. You can see the mouse “drawing” (in green) the specific areas to be CV’d. This way we can ignore the extraneous sources of IR light (headlights, streetlights, etc) and only track the points we want to track.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The most unique aspect of the project was the system I developed for diffusing the IR light.  I discovered that styrofoam balls diffuse LED light extremely well, even with extremely directional superbright LEDs. Thanks to GRL for the LED Throwie precedent, which we modified slightly with this diffusion and IR light.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Presentation with a breakdown of the process:

December 2009.

render 1

render 2

Using openFrameworks I wrote an application that analyzes video and generated these still vector images based on specific image processing.  Within OF, I used the OpenCV library to detect a singular blob in the video. In this case, it is a hand. As the hand moves up, down, left or right (x + y axis’), a line is drawn with a thickness relative to speed.  This line is the red color in the images. the dark and light grays are ellipses and curves that are controlled by the direction and speed of the blob.  Any video would generate a completely unique image, and I plan on creating a series of these based on more conceptual source material.

openFrameworks006 code download.

full size images (7200×4800) download 1 and 2.

October 2009.

This was a project I conceived of and executed in Beijing, China in June of 2009. Green, yellow, and red LEDs indicate safe, medium, and dangerous levels of closeness that someone or something is to you. An Arduino and infrared range finder were embedded into a jacket, and worn around the city. The project was inspired by public interaction in China. Crowds on Chinese streets have no concept of personal space, and this extends even to the traffic in the street. Displaying colored light with inherent meaning on the face created a rather jarring effect, and attracted many stares in public. Facemasks are very common in China, particularly in cities, and for various reasons. Pollution, dust, and disease (we were there during the height of the H1N1 scare) are all reasons why wearing one is a good idea in public. I developed concepts for separate masks that are sensitive to each of these environmental variables, however with the technology on hand created one displaying personal space measurements.

Featured in the Parsons School for Design Re:D Design Magazine, January 2010.

More images in my Flickr set.

Click here to view the embedded video.

SOBEaR is a robot friend for anyone who does not know their own limits, or has problems controlling themselves. User simply presses a button in SOBEaR’s left foot, then blows into the alcohol sensor above the bear’s bowtie. An alcohol reading is displayed on a scale of 1 – 6 using LED embedded in his chest. Then SOBEaR pours a drink with an alcohol to mixer ratio that he deems appropriate for your current BAC level.

Featured on Gizmodo, Engadget, and more.

To read more about how SOBEaR works, as well as to see how they are made, see my blog entry about it. SOBEaR is yet another one of my projects that utilizes a HackDuino, specifically in this case for size purposes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

All video and sound is derived directly from electrical impulses from my brain.

While working at the Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis as a research assistant, I participated in several EEG studies.  As an RA I had access to my data, and used 64 of the 128 channels to create this.  This video represents approximately 12 seconds of brain activity.

2007.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A theremin (which I constructed from the Moog Etherwave kit in the summer of 2007) is routed into MaxMSP. Audio is analyzed for frequency and amplitude data. This is applied to a 3D physical modeling patch in Jitter.

This project was made in collaboration with Solomon Bothwell in October of 2007. The installation was exhibited in the Basement Gallery of the Art Department of UC Davis in November of 2007.