Instruction Sets for Strangers

Circuit fail

barnacleyarn — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:20:46 +0000

So I finished taping and soldering up the board to the chair, Rupa finished the fur-covering and then:

THE MICROCHIP FAILED

Bringin it to the public

barnacleyarn — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:21:32 +0000

Beat seat gets introduced to the public!

barnacleyarn — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:10:13 +0000

So we put the chair in front of us, by the benches…and people mostly ignored it.

Some snarled at it.

Unfortunately, in the public space the noises were completely dwarfed by all other sounds going on. We decided we needed to make it clearly musical and interactive. So we bought another keyboard, put it on the fuzzy bench in front and put it all in the center of the circle.

People were still afraid to interact…so we started interacting.

Then the most ADORABLE French boy interacted with it and serenaded us.
Le sigh.

Unfortunately he didn’t propose or ask us out, like a couple other participants.

I love how these strangers became performers for other strangers because of our project.

Circuit Fail

barnacleyarn — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 23:24:23 +0000

So I finished taping and soldering up the board to the chair, Rupa finished the fur-covering and then:

THE MICROCHIP FAILED

Functioning piano chair

barnacleyarn — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 20:18:53 +0000

Soldering/re-wiring the keyboard circuit

barnacleyarn — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:45:50 +0000

I took off one of the circuit boards, and wired up these bad boys. I’m not sure if this is the cause of the ultimate failure…I couldn’t figure out how these were supposed to be grounded. May have been a mistake to hack into them.

I bought a chair from The Container Store because we wanted one with handles (I regret now that we hot glued all over it, because I would love to return that way-too-much-money-for-a-chair purchase)

Here are the mad scientists at work (chex mix kept us goin strong):

Here’s a close up (yeah, I know it looks like a bomb)

Or a shark. rar!

And here it is with fabric switches attached (before all went to hell):

Keyboard demo

barnacleyarn — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:24:07 +0000

Keyboard hack

barnacleyarn — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:38:24 +0000

$10 electronic keyboard from Walgreens

Rar! With some screwdrivin and gusto…I broke into this bad boy!

And all the inside junk

The microchip (R.I.P)

Crazy circuits circus

Covered Beat-Seat

barnacleyarn — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:43:51 +0000

Hairball?

barnacleyarn — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 06:51:33 +0000

Rupa called me and said “So…how do you feel about animal fur?”

The fabulous fabric she picked out for the chair’s cover. It shed a whole lot.