Hey Scientists of Berlin

this is your wiki page to share your science hack ideas. It doesn't need to be complete if you just have some sketchy ideas you can write them down as well and maybe someone else gets inspired and the idea gets further developed. 

Before you start do the quick registration described here.  

 

• Need ideas? Browse some of the ideas from previous Science Hack Days or check out the ongoing list of science-related APIs, datasets and useful programming tools/frameworks. Also, here's some examples of the weird/awesome hacks that have been created at Science Hack Day.
• Equipment that will be available for you to use at the event: 3D printers, Arduinos, Raspberri Pis, (more coming soon). If you request something or can offer something add what you need your name/contact to the sections below. If you can provide something requested add a note behind the request/offer.
• Data do it the same way as with equipment.
• Need help? Got help? Just interested? Add your offers, requests, and interests to the Connections section. 

 

If you don't have an idea that is also fine. There will be enough time on friday to get you excited about something!

 

 

• Hack pitches
• Equipment requests
• Equipment offers
• Data set requests
• Data set offers
• Connections
• Comments

 

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Example Title: This is just a template!

Example description of just a few short sentences goes here. Keep it brief!

 

Hackers:

• Your Name, Your Twitter and/or Email (so people can reach you)
• ...and jump in!

 

Comments

• I'll bring some paper-clips.Let's do it!

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Hack pitches

 

Hacking in your brain!

-Luke, Lorenzo, Federico, Gyán, Julia and Giovanni
We are interested in how human brains react to different stimuli, for example, smell, taste or other sensory inputs. Basically we have a brainwave reader and some equipment for making pasta and food (yes that is part of sensory inputs ;)). We have people familiar with Arduino, Max/MSP and also programming skills. We are basically designers so we are open to different people. If you find something interesting then join us! :)    

 

Astronomical Datasets

- Adrian and Jochen

 

Urban Mobility with SSDV

-Peter

 

Human-sized Scanning Tunneling Microscope

-Jesus

 

DataCanvas: Hang some beautiful data in your wall

Build a machine that converts data into paintings. It has a brush that moves in 2D and liquid ink. It does not have to be extremely precise, as the idea is to let people visualize their data creating art (popularizing data viz and science). If moving a brush is too complicated for the available time, a simpler version would use a fan to blow the ink drop in the right direction.

It would be great to visualize something personal, like e-mail, twitter or fb activity. This would allow people to say "this is me, as a painting", an compare it to other people's results.

Hackers:

• Abe Pazos, @hamoid

Comments

• I (Abe) need help with the hardware side. I've done simple Arduino tests and I teach creative coding. Someone who has built a 3D printer would be great help.

 

Spit Lamp

- Lucy

 

Wearable LEDs with sensors

This hack combines visual output with physical input.

The output is done with individual addressable RGB LEDs. Each RGB LED can have any color.

The input ist done with a three axis accelerometer and optional a three axis compass. 

Hackers:

• Stefan @trafopop
• Finn @finnpauls

Comments:

The first attempt to combine visual output with physical input, was to connect the accelerometer with an Arduino.

Data was measured with three analog inputs of the Arduino and transferred serial via USB interface to an application written in Processing which visualized the data as a 2D graph amplitude versus time.

The expectation was to see constant values and then changing values when the sensor ist moved.

But result showed fluctuations with some frequency.

This behavior was reproduced with the same sensor on a different (new) Arduino and different computer.

The reason for that seems to be that that sensor was in a low energy sleep mode. To activate the sensor a pull up resistor should be connected to one pin auf the device. But then we did connect it without resistor directly to +5V, which resulted in a hot sensor. So we stopped using this accelerometer and went on with the three axis magnetometer.

This compass was digitally connected to the Arduino via I2C protocol.
The console log of the measured values looked quite promising. But visualizing the data again as 2D graph showed again a problem. We got constant values when not moving the sensor. And we got different values after moving. But the results where not reproducible so wo could not the results of this sensor.

Without having any usable sensors that we could connect to the Arduino we decides to go to plan B.
Our Plan B was to connect Move Motion Controllers from a game console via USB to the Mac and to connect the LEDs via Arduino and USB to the Mac. And this worked quite well, but was not so wearable as the first indented solution.

The Move Motion Controller has several build-in three axis sensors: accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer.

With Processing we received the data from the sensors, put it into a text string and send it serial via USB to the Arduino.

It took us some time to figure out that different existing code examples to split a string on an Arduino did not work as expected. After finding a work around for that, we where able to transfer a color value from Processing to the Arduino. A simple Arduino program was made, which set all connected LEDs to one same color. At first we chose the gyroscope values for calculating a color, because its high sensitivity to movements. But after stoping the movement the same color was displayed. So we changed the our data source to the accelerometer and the result was nice range of bright colors, which were dependent on the position of controller to gravity, when it was not moved. 

The next step was to improve the visual output from one color to many animated colors.

This was done by copying all existing colors on the string of LEDs to its next's neighbors on the string and setting the first color with the received color. This results in running colors because continuously new color data arrived.

It is very fun to the the colors changing while moving the controller. It like painting on a canvas with changing but controllable colors. The the next enhanced of the Processing application was to feedback the calculated color from the accelerometer value back to the controller which has one big RGB LED one the top.

So it was even more fun to choose a shiny color by moving the controller and seeing the result on all the other LEDs in a vivid animation.

Further additions to code were made:

• using the value of the trigger of the controller to change the brightness of the LEDs.
• connecting a second string of LEDs with a second Arduino. While a button on the controller is pressed the other LEDs were updated. But this feature led to bad usability because coordinating the trigger or the button or both was more complicated than pressing the trigger the alone.
• So the button feature was removed and instead the trigger now controls the brightness of one LED string and the inverse trigger value controls the brightness of the other LED string. So you blend colors nicely from one string to the other.

 

During this iterative process of development, we made often and early user tests, with users which never had seen this installation before. So we finally build an interactive hardware and software installation with a great user experience and without scarifying usability. And we learned ourself more about how to be creative and the creative process. 

 

On the second day we transmitted the button information to the Arduino.

We started with the red button for simulating a break event. A break event is when you are riding a bicycle and you slow down by using the breaks. For the break event we implemented that all LEDs switch immediately to Red as a break light.

Than we used two other buttons to light up only the right or the left side of the Hat with Yellow.
The next step was to make the Yellow light blink, so that it can be used to show in which direction you want to ride your bike. The final step was another button for switching off all LEDs.

 

FFFFFFFAAAAAARGH!!!!

- Iwan

 

Clocks clocks clocks

- Bodo

 

P2P Learning Platform with API

-Joseph

 

Airborne MAC sensor networks

-Stephan

 

Windy Globe

-Kai

 

Twitter party generator

-Ellen

 

Mindblowing Project

-Pineapple Cake

 

Predicting haemorrhage in pre-hospital traumatic patients using open source real-time ECG for smartphone or ECG+SpO2 for Arduino (or Raspberry) 

- talk to Claudine

 

The university of British Columbia seems to have developed one part of this experiment: http://www.phoneoximeter.org
The other part would be and ECG (with only three electrodes) set that sends the data in real time to an iPhone over bluetooth. The fact that it is realtime is important, but an 8 bit ADC at 300Hz (few Kbit/s) should do over a Bluetooth connection (some Mbit/s). Or perhaps not, but one has to try to know.
 There is some commercial stuff available, but not being open source one cannot develop from there. There are opensource solutions, too, but they are incomplete or based on arduino or other technology (and a smartphone or tablet is easier to stick to the wall of an ambulance). Of course, an alternative would be to redevelop also the SpO2 reader for arduino, instead of using the one from the Brit Columbia, and then work also on the packaging so that it is not a bunch of wires but a tiny sealed box.

 

Node-based dataflow programming for astronomical data

- talk to Claudine

"node-based dataflow programming format that allows users to analyze spectra using various tools in different kinds of combinations. The design is based on a code package called PD (pure data) that the experimental musicians here use for abstract music, but it's also the basis of instrument control guis, labview, etc. The idea is to hide as much under the hood, but still leave plenty of knobs, switches and flexibility to do any kind of analysis one can think of. I'm aiming it for getting students involved in research early on, research for educators, etc." - Adam Burgasser, professor at UCSD

 

 

Equipment requests

Iwan @qubodup/qubodup@gmail.com:

• Webcams that works with RPi (I realized mine doesn't) 
• It'd be great to have a tiny screen that works with Raspberry Pi (discussion, seems to be costly) to build a small machine that not only processes/uploads but also displays information
• Red buttons. Big red buttons! (USB ones seem expensive, so we might end up having to "waste" Makey Makeys for the sole purpose of accepting one button's input if there will be any :) ) 

 

Equipment offers

 

SHD Team:

3D printer, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, MaKey MaKey, FPGA boards: Mixxeo, Milkymist One, Papilio Pro, RHINO, ML401, Digital Oscilloscope DSO 2090

 

Data set requests

 

Data set offers

 

Connections

 

I am happy to help people with _____

Name	twitter/mail	Thing to help with
Iwan	@qubodup/qubodup@gmail.com	Image/sound/video editing & datamashing in Linux/Raspberry Pi command line (for example to make glitch art)

 

I would like help with _____

Name	twitter/mail	Thing you could use help with

 

Comments

 

 

How to join the Wiki

 

You need to create a PBworks account first. Go to https://my.pbworks.com/?p=create to create an account. Once you've created an account and are logged in, return to the Science Hack Day wiki and click "join this workspace" on the right. Now you're setup to edit any page on the wiki without having to deal with this unintuitive process ever again, yay!