Software Sketch for BerrieBase

I threw this together to get a feel of what our software could potentially look like.




This is similar to various data-flow languages (like vvvv, pd and Max/MSP) ...

 In theory I really liked data-flow languages, but I have never found an environment I was comfortable enough with to stick with. My plan with our software is to keep it simpler than the ones I just mentioned, and have the ability to switch over to code view, if you want to do something more complex. Basically I want to be able to generate flow-charts from code and code from flow-charts. I imagine every graphical node to be represented by a function. A newly declared variable would also be a node, and all other variables would be represented by lines.

This will of course require users to stick to a more functional style of programming than the relatively imperative way that is used with Arduino. Which could be a curse or a blessing. I am not sure which one yet.

More Pictures of BerryBase Prototypes

Some more Pictures of our Hardware Prototypes:

The Base:

The shift registers which connect the base with the RaspberryPi

The first Berrie Modules :-)

BerryBase - What we have so far

 The Base

These two PCBs will merge into one. We have them separated now for debugging and as it was easier to design this way. The bottom PCB (the smaller one) connects to the RaspberryPi. The top PCB is stacked on top of that.

The top PCB provides us with connectors for 8 modules. Each module (or Berry) has a couple of digital inputs and outputs connecting to the RaspberryPi (for interrupts etc.) as well as SPI and I2C.



 The GPIOBerry

This is the most basic extension. It gives you 16 programmable logic pins.



 The AnalogBerry

This Berry gives you 8 24bit Analog Inputs. (Yes, 24Bit may be slightly overkill.)



The BrainBerry

We had to do it. Its an Arduino Clone. It is both a I2C Master and Slave, Acts as your standard Arduino, while staying in constant communication with the RaspberryPi. (I want 8 of these modules for programming my Evil Super AI)



The ButtonBerry / FeedbackBerry

We figure we will be using this guy a lot for debugging. It has 8 buttons paired with 8 green status LEDs.

Thats it for now. More to come :-)

p.

BerryBase - How it came about

Since I first heard about the RaspberryPi, I was fascinated by the little computer. Once the final specs however came out, I realized that I did not really know what I would use it for. It seemed under-powered for the computer-vision application I originally had in mind. I considered using it as a microcontroller, but I soon realized that in most cases I would be better off using an Arduino instead.

I soon realized, that adding some basic circuitry might improve the situation. I also wanted to add a case. My idea was, that it would be cool to simply increase the number of I/O pins, as well as add some analog inputs. Additionally I wanted to be able to source significantly more power over the individual pins. I discussed this at length with my friend Michael Harst, but it stayed a simple idea.

First Prototype

I ended up meeting Yann Leretaille, Torben Friehe, Mathias Hemmerle & Alex Hannemann. Together we created the first prototype. It was Yann who also suggested "Everything should be Plug & Play". I thought he was crazy.

Somehow Yann and I however felt our original design restricting. We where especially unhappy with how we where handling the SPI and I2C ports. (Basically we where ignoring them). Eventuelly we started experimenting with ways of extending the SPI and I2C ports. While doing so we realized that we might as well create a modular system - we thought that the design would not be significantly more complex (we where wrong). And all of a sudden Yann's "Plug & Play" Idea no longer seemed crazy, once we restricted the Plug & Play functions to the modules we designed.

BerryBase PCBs

I am currently working on extension for the RaspberryPi.

Info will soon go online at www.berrybase.cc I just got this image sent from iteadstudio.

Am super psyched

 

Images of the Mountains of Madness

OK, this post is quite different from the stuff I usually put here, but I was reading  The Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft and noticed that there recurring references to ancient ruins and stone formations. I was interested in how these sites where portrayed at the time the book was written. So I googled, and even though I know most of them before, looking at the old pictures somehow felt like I was getting closer to Lovecrafts original vision.

I figured it was well worth sharing...

Images taken from Library of congress website (http://www.loc.gov/index.html),

except the imag of Monument Valley, which is from the library of the University of Utah (http://content.lib.utah.edu/) and the images of Machu Picchu, which are random webfinds. (The first of these presumably from the original 1911 expedition, the latter one of unknown date, but due to the state of the ruins must also predate 1930.)

All images predate the writing of Mountains of Madness

***************************

[…]

As he had said, their edges were crumbled and rounded from untold aeons of savage weathering; but their preternatural solidity and tough material had saved them from obliteration. Many parts, especially those closest to the slopes, seemed identical in substance with the surrounding rock surface. The whole arrangement looked like the ruins of Macchu Picchu in the Andes,

 

 or the primal foundation walls of Kish as dug up by the Oxford Field Museum Expedition in 1929;

 and both Danforth and I obtained that occasional impression of separate Cyclopean blocks which Lake had attributed to his flight-companion Carroll. How to account for such things in this place was frankly beyond me, and I felt queerly humbled as a geologist. Igneous formations often have strange regularities - like the famous Giants’ Causeway in Ireland –

 but this stupendous range, despite Lake’s original suspicion of smoking cones, was above all else nonvolcanic in evident structure.

[…]

V

I think that both of us simultaneously cried out in mixed awe, wonder, terror, and disbelief in our own senses as we finally cleared the pass and saw what lay beyond. Of course, we must have had some natural theory in the back of our heads to steady our faculties for the moment. Probably we thought of such things as the grotesquely weathered stones of the Garden of the Gods in Colorado,

or the fantastically symmetrical wind-carved rocks of the Arizona desert.

Perhaps we even half thought the sight a mirage like that we had seen the morning before on first approaching those mountains of madness. We must have had some such normal notions to fall back upon as our eyes swept that limitless, tempest-scarred plateau and grasped the almost endless labyrinth of colossal, regular, and geometrically eurythmic stone masses which reared their crumbled and pitted crests above a glacial sheet not more than forty or fifty feet deep at its thickest, and in places obviously thinner.

[…]

We also came upon several star-shaped open spaces, evidently public squares, and noted various undulations in the terrain. Where a sharp hill rose, it was generally hollowed out into some sort of rambling-stone edifice; but there were at least two exceptions. Of these latter, one was too badly weathered to disclose what had been on the jutting eminence, while the other still bore a fantastic conical monument carved out of the solid rock and roughly resembling such things as the well-known Snake Tomb …

(here is a really nice photograph which shows it in context: http://eu.art.com/products/p15527056-sa-i3696219/posters.htm?ui=73968881EA724F93957B0D144DC46585)

… in the ancient valley of Petra.

*

Here is a link to the original novel by Lovecraft: http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/mountainsofmaddness.htm

I also created a .pdf of this post for other reasons, but in case you want it, here is the downlaod:

http://www.facepalmbook.com/paul/mountains/images_mountains_lovecraft.pdf

Music Visualization

This is a couple of months old, but I was playing around with music visualization and here are some of the results. The first two where created using Processing & Ess, the last was done using Processing and Minim.

 First two tracks are by me, last one is by my friend Hoob.

 This one actually is my favorite:

   

Here I like how the drums in the beginning clearly have a different visual response:

   

This one is slightly different in style - which just shows, that that programming tools one works with will influence the final artistic result: