Metzwerk

The Pylofon

moritz — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 02:10:12 +0000

The Pylofon is a wlan-xylophone-robot which can be controlled by internet - but as well by cellphone or a Wiimote. It also plays MIDI-files and time-scheduled random sounds.

We build it in two nights at easter 2008, using 2 Graupner Servos, a 99c-xylophone, a cardbord-box, an Asus WL500gP-wlan-router with OpenWRT Kamikaze and Python 2.5, SSH, a Pololu Serial 8-Servo Controller, an USB to Serial-Adapter, a Bluetooth-Stick and a USB-Memory-Stick.

The Pylofone, Demo I

The Pylofon-Drum-Section, still practicing

Next plans: a better demovideo, web-interface, RSS-import, live-MIDI, drum-section, mode-switch and gpl-python-sourcode.

The Pylofon on flickr

Livecasting re:publica

kaspar — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:02:22 +0000

Auf der re:publica ‘08 wird sich Kaspar um das Livecasting kümmern. Es heißt nicht Streaming oder Podcasting, weil es neben den MP3-Livestreams und den Podcasts auch mitwachsende Echtzeit-Mitschnitte geben wird, die sofort, also noch wärend der laufenden Veranstaltung, abgerufen werden können.

Das dahinterstehende Livecasting-Serversystem hatten wir erstmals auf dem 9to5-Festivalcamp eingesetzt und nun weiter optimiert - so werden nun z.B. die Metadaten der Mitschnitte direkt aus dem Pentabarf-Veranstaltungskalender übernommen.

5 laptops and many visitors

moritz — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 01:21:54 +0000

Last week Kaspar shot and published this photo on flickr - soon it got posted on the make blog which made it climb on reddit too.

Actually the most interesting thing is not the photo (inspired by the transparent screen pool on flickr) - but how fast you can reach more than 65.000 visitors within a couple of days.

very hot chip

moritz — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:03:55 +0000

We repaired a damaged Apple iBook G3 by heating up its graphic-chip to more than 200° celsius with a cheap heatgun. The amazing howto on Geektechnique was right - after three times heating and re-soldering the pins, the notebook started working again!

Hello SMS Jukebox

moritz — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 02:35:03 +0000

Hello SMS Jukebox is an interactive horoscope for partys and vernissages. People can ask all kinds of questions by sms, adding their name and birthdate. The Jukebox then blinks, a character repeats the question on the screen and the horoscope, personalized by a clever fox, gives the answer.

We built the SMS-Jukebox using: an old Nokia 6310 and a datacable, Gammu to submit the SMS to a MySQL-Database, PHP for the Horoscope-Backend and XML-output, Python and MaryTTS (thanks to Universität Saarland for their fast TTS-Server!) to generate the voices, XML and Adobe Flash to display everything on the screen. The Flash-Part was written by Barbara Rauh and the style, music and characters were created by Jim Avignon. The holy (and secret) horoscope itself lives in Scotland and Berlin.

So far we’ve had fun presenting the SMS Jukebox in Athens (Goethe Institut), Berlin (Haus Schwarzenberg), Luzern (Fumetto-Festival), Munich (Jörg-Heitsch Gallery) and New York (Deutsches Haus).

> View the Jukebox-Demo (without questions and answers)

> More pictures and details on jukebox.mtz.in