Entries tagged ‘shift’
Home Made Ubicomp. Slides plus presenter notes from my presentation at SHiFT 08 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Photo by Lali Masriera. CC-BY-2.0.
Ubiquitous computing, or physical computing, or everyware, or pervasive computing, or ambient intelligence, or whatever you may want to call it, are terms for computers that are not in front of you, but around you. It’s about an invisible cloud of computerized intelligence that has filled up all spaces you could ever go.
This fluffy computer stuff is or will be in your clothes, on your banking cards, in the packaging of the food you buy, in the keys to your house. It’ll come in the form of RFID tags, Bluetooth devices, and sensors: for heat, movement, smell, taste, and so on.
Basically, it’ll be everywhere. It’ll be ubiquitous. It’ll be ambient. It’ll be physical. It’ll be pervasive. You get the point.
Photo by Incase Designs. CC-BY-2.0.
And all these things will be interconnected. Sensors will pick up the RFID tags in your clothes, so when you walk into a jeans store, a computer can analyze the brand of jeans you’re wearing, and suggest which pair to try on. Your fridge knows which dinner ingredients are available, so it can suggest recipes; warn you when the milk is out of date, and automatically order food. Your house knows when you arrive, so it can switch on the lights.
In all, pretty awesome!
Photo by Michell Zappa. CC-BY-2.0.
Provided, of course, that we get this big utopia working. Of which I’m somewhat skeptical, and Tijmen, who’s giving a talk later today, is even more skeptical. So, go see his talk.
Photo by Michell Zappa. CC-BY-2.0.
Also, it’ll become possible to track where you are. Which supermarkets do you frequent? How much time do you spend in that hotel, when you’re supposedly working late? What is your daily exercise route? It’ll be known, both by governments and private parties. Probably without your knowledge or consent.
Where will this take us?
Photo by Daniel Martini. CC-BY-2.0.
This, then, is the fundamental question of our technological age. We do concern ourselves with questions about privacy, and yet we eagerly give it up. How much does Google know? It knows what I search for, and therefore it can deduce that I’m a web developer. It knows where I live – for that is the starting address of Google Maps, and the country most searches originate from. It knows where I travel, when the searches originate from a different country, and perhaps even a different city.
It knows a lot, you know.
And with ubicomp, a lot of organizations are going to know a lot more. How we’re going to deal with that, I do not know. Nor do I intend to answer that question here, so that’s okay 
Photo by Lali Masriera. CC-BY-2.0.
However, what I do know, is that we have to start playing with ubicomp ourselves. Because only then can we hope to understand privacy issues, as well as figure out what we actually want it to do. And if we never reach utopia, at least we have made our lives more fun and interesting on the way.
And, on the road to utopia, we will hopefully be able to stop big company interests from dictating how our environment is going to react to us.
Photo by Ed Schipul. CC-BY-SA-2.0.
To illustrate this, I’m going to read out for you a few bits of the Ambient Intelligence Vision Scenario from Philips.
Photo by Jon Fife. CC-BY-SA-2.0.
Ellen returns home after a long day’s work. At the front door she is recognized by an intelligent surveillance camera, the door alarm is switched off, and the door unlocks and opens. When she enters the hall the house map indicates (…) that her daughter Charlotte is in the children’s playroom, where she is playing with an interactive screen. The remote children surveillance service is notified that she is at home, and subsequently the on-line connection is switched off. (…) She briefly connects to the playroom to say hello to Charlotte, and her video picture automatically appears on the flat screen that is currently used by Charlotte.
Source: Scenario from http://www.research.philips.com/technologies/syst_softw/ami/vision.html
What jumps out first is surveillance. You’ve got to ask yourself, is this the first thing we can come up with in ambient intelligence scenarios? Surveillance?
However, surveillance is ever more important. Not in the least because we seem to want it ourselves. In a society based on fear, technology is a method of alleviating the fear. However, ubicomp is not romanticized for its utility in security and surveillance, it’s romanticized or the positive stuff.
This then is about play. Something positive?
Charlotte is in the playroom. She’s playing with a screen. Hmm, that’s not very ubicomp now is it? But the worst part is that all the mother does, is connect to the playroom from somewhere else in the house, just to say hello. Through the screen.
All this technology, and we can’t figure out how to have actual play between mother and daughter? Actual, interesting interaction? Like “magic bracelets”, which can glow based on remote commands. Perhaps used by the mom to encourage her daughter before an exam.
No. Big companies won’t be bringing us the kind of ubicomp that we can actually use. Instead, they’ll likely focus on complete home automation systems, on retail services. Not on play, not on fun, not on open networks we can hack ourselves. Therefore, rather than wait for the big corp version of ubicomp, we should take matters into our own hands and go build it ourselves!
We must build our own ubicomp because only then will we learn to understand it. Because only then will we figure out precisely why we’d want it. Because only then can we introduce fun and play into it.
Photo by Sara Petagna. CC-BY-2.0.
Now, then, what are some examples of home made ubicomp?
Last month I participated in the Mediamatic Social RFID Hackerscamp at PICNIC 08 in Amsterdam. In five days, about 30 people build 8 RFID installations to be used at the conference. We used a bunch of laptops, RFID readers, various electronic things, and construction materials. Nothing ridiculously expensive, nor something that takes months to create.
Let’s look at some of the installations we built.
Photo by Daria Perevezentsev. Used for the greater good of Mediamatic promotion.
First, a foundation. At PICNIC, you could get an RFID tag, which was then linked to your online PICNIC profile. Quite useful for the installations, who could figure out who you are by looking up the RFID tag. The RFID tag was the primary means of interaction with the installations, starting or enabling other actions.
iktag image from http://www.mediamatic.net/page/51173/en.
A battery powered, couch on wheels, providing free massages. Both armrests have an RFID reader, on which you put your RFID tag to receive a massage. Other people can place their tag on the armrest to recharge your massage credit. And, for even more social interaction, if you use the couch with somebody else, you’re automatically connected on the online PICNIC network.
What you need to build this? An old couch, car massage chairs, two RFID readers and a laptop. Perhaps a car battery and LED displays to show massage credit. Not very high tech, but pretty awesome!
A sprint race! Touch your tag to a reader hidden in the start structure, wait for the “start gun” to fire, and run to the finish. Again, touch your tag, and a photo is taken and your time is placed in the ranking.
ikRun ranking table.
And a finish photo. This is me “running” the impossible time of 15.1 seconds.
What do you need to build this? In essence you’ll need two RFID readers and two laptops. In this case, you also need one camera, and one or two displays at the finish, and a sound system both for the start signal and at the finish. Of course, you can come up with all kinds of interaction beyond simply using the RFID tag to start and finish.
I noticed there’s a segway in the building, anyone up for a Segway race? 
Google popularity contest! RFID tags are used to find your profile name, then a Google search is performed. The person with the highest number of search results, goes highest.
Requirements: two small lifts (not exactly home made, but hey). Computer, two RFID readers, some mechanics and Arduino to control the lifts via computer.
The awesomenest installation was Vbird, but that’s only because I helped create it. Vbird is a bird that you throw to other people. Catch it, let it read your RFID tag, and throw it to somebody else. It says “Nice to meet you” when it reads your tag, and makes happy sounds when flying. Plus, it records its flight on video, and the video created after it read your tag is uploaded to your PICNIC profile.
Unfortunately the hardware kept breaking, so in total we only played with it for about 15 minutes. That said, those were 15 very cool minutes.
Requirements: large bird, Arduino with accelerometer and RFID reader, laptop for communicating with the bird and playing the sounds. Less easy to get: wireless camera and processing infrastructure.
This is a project from last year. An RFID reader is hidden underneath the tea cup, and when you place your tag in the cup, various information that can be found about you on Google is displayed around the cup. Great conversation starter!
Requirements: laptop, RFID reader, beamer.
A memory game written by yours truly. Finds names of Bluetooth devices in the room. Uses these names as if they were Flickr usernames, and finds the recent photos from these Flickr users. Then randomly assigns photos to two RFID tags. Your job is to find the two tags that have the same photo.
Requirements: Laptop, RFID reader.
Looking at these examples, what is the technology you need for home made ubicomp?
Basically, a laptop, one or two RFID readers, and perhaps some micro controllers to control other hardware. What hardware is available on the consumer market for playing with these technologies?
Photo by Lali Masriera. CC-BY-2.0.
Arduino provides actual hardware. If you took part in yesterdays Arduino workshop you’ll have seen it. I’ve also got some hardware right here. Arduino does RFID readers, bread boards, micro controllers, Bluetooth, and so on. Use Arduino if you want to program hardware and do soldering. Requires a larger up-front investment than, say, using a computer with the built-in Bluetooth, but you can do some pretty awesome things.
The Arduino hardware designs are open source, as is the software. Open hardware, open software, low prices. What’s not to like?
Photo by Oliver Keller. CC-BY-SA-2.0.
Tikitag is pretty new, launched just over two weeks ago. They provide an RFID reader and RFID tags, plus a website that you use to configure actions for tags. Right now they only provide a few actions, like opening a website, going to a special photo page, or your online business card. You can use Tikitags to control iTunes or make a Skype call. You should also be able to create your own actions, although the setup seems rather complicated.
The cool thing about Tikitags is that you can get a starter kit, with reader and a few tags, for € 35 (excluding tax). That’s pretty cheap! Also, by using the website, you can give an RFID tag (or a tagged object) to somebody else, who can then read the tag with her Tikitag reader to execute the action you configured.
And you don’t have to go through the Tikitag software. You can use the Tikitag reader directly on your computer to read RFID tags, so you can hook up your own actions. These won’t work on somebody else’s machine, however.
Photo by Mark Wubben. (Not on Flickr, yet)
Violet is the maker of Nabaztag, the rabbit you see here. It’s a rabbit that’s connected to the internet, and can therefore give you updates on the weather, the news and your e-mail. You can link it to another rabbit, so you can communicate with somebody else through the rabbit. It also has an RFID reader so you can trigger actions, much like Tikitag. Indeed, much like Tikitag, the rabbit is controlled via the Nabaztag website, making Nabaztag a closed system.
Next week Violet is coming out with Mir:ror, a RFID reader that is very similar to the Tikitag system. So, again, a closed system. Fun to play around with, less interesting to use for creating new stuff.
Photo by Régine Debatty. CC-BY-SA-2.0.
OpenSpime, also present here, is an open standard – in development – for connecting objects. Could be quite interesting if you want to hook up your home made ubicomp to other ubicomp.
Photo by David Orban. CC-BY-2.0.
It’s also a good idea to get an EEE PC running Linux. These are small, and not very expensive machines that you can hide in many places.
Photo by Benjamin Busche. CC-BY-SA-2.0.
An interesting magazine to read may be MAKE, which is about making cool stuff yourself.
Logo from http://makezine.com.
In terms of software, most hardware as Java libraries available. Therefore, programming in Java may be a good option. Python is also a good choice.
I’ve been working on my own framework, written in JavaScript, but running in Java. You can get it from http://code.google.com/p/physical-js/.
Photo by Windell Oskay. CC-BY-2.0.
Now, for the project I’ve been working on for SHiFT. In each room there’s one or more computers which look for Bluetooth devices. For example your phone or your laptop. All computers communicate with each other and with a main computer, which aggregates the data. Through this, we know which device is in which room, so we can derive the popularity of the sessions, and we can also know who’s where.
The data we collect is posted – live – to Jaiku and Twitter. If you go to the reception, you can link your actual, human name, to the Bluetooth device. That way, we can announce where you are.
Make sure to enable Bluetooth on your phone or laptop, and set it to be discoverable. That way, we can find and track you!
Unfortunately we didn’t manage to set this up.
Photo by Lali Masriera. CC-BY-2.0.
Obrigado!
Photo by Jeff Kubina. CC-BY-SA-2.0.
I’m in Lisbon currently, for the SHiFT conference. Working on a installation using Bluetooth to track people as they move throughout the conference, and doing a session on Home Made Ubicomp. More later.
