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InterNETional workshops in NYC, Medellin, Zürich and more

For 24 h we participated at the Pachube International Internet of Things Hackathon – April 8-9, 2011. A group of 8 hackers, coders, gardeners and others worked together in the MechArtLab, Zurich, to explore new connections of things, environmental sensors, http-protocols, plants, kinects. While at the same time other groups worked in similar projects all over the world, we tried to connect and share some of our work with them in real time.

While in NYC the FutureLabCamp invited biologists, hackers and garage scientist to come up with new homebrew bio-experimentations, Andy was doing another DIY microscopy workshop in Medellin during the LabSurLab event.

Here are some impressions from the Zurich Pachube-Hackaton and others on flickr tagged “pachubehack”

see our pachube streams here

and more info about the Zurich pachube-hackaton are on the SGMK wiki (currently offline).

KresseKunst 1.0
Here a few impressions about KresseKunst, The “Hello World” of BioArt…

During the pachube-hackaton, we developed a few simple experiments with cress. Germination, growth and detection.

Below you see the first single pixel KresseShield 0.1 (its got a laser in it, yeah!). We tried to detect growth of one single cress seed using a laser and a LDR on the arduino. In the current arduino shield setup it turnedout its better use as a turbidity sensor. Works great! So we can now qualitatively measure how many particles, inorganic or living, are in a water sample. Also its very easy to measure sedimentation of these particles, and thus get an approximation of their size. We then sent the data with OSC to kiilo’s gateway, which uploaded all the data to pachube.
KresseShield_1

Here is a read-out from the turbidityShield sent to puredata:
turbiditiy_logging_pd

KresseShield


KresseKunst 2.0
Then we built another shield, this time for real KresseKunst, with the goal to grow a small culture of cress, detect environmental conditions (T, hum) and control lighting and watering conditions (in progress). This could further be integrated into a pachube stream, using data from remote places, such as light and humidity conditions and thus be able to virtually implement them in the cress culture. We are still thinking about how to detect the “Kresse Faktor”, how to detect growth of the cress as simple as possible. Maybe detecting the green part of a reflected light source could do the trick, using an LDR and a green filter.
KresseShield_2_0_front


Worms on Stage 2.1
tamberg and dusjagr were working on the new x-y stage for the microscope, thanks to mac and gaudi for their designs and laser cutting. After first experimentations using an OSC interface from an Android phone to control the stage, we decided to build a feb interface, which allows to move the x-y stage and change lighting conditions, while the video of the worms on the microscope are stream to the same webpage.

click here for the online interface (now offline)

xy_stage_OSC_control


Webinterface:
web_interface


Other projects
We also uploaded heartbeats, connected different humidity and temperature sensors, streamed data to pachube from light conditions and used various other streams for local actuation of servos, lasers and other crazy hacks, also we hacked around with the kinect, although thats not really a pachube thingy, but loads of fun! Finally we also built the Kressegulator, whatever it is…

kressegulator


Image Gallery


IRC webchat #pachube at freenode



  1. Colton on Tuesday 5, 2011

    Any sort of tutorial on how you built the turbidity sensor?

  2. dusjagr on Tuesday 5, 2011

    a laser pointing at an LDR in a black tube… readout with arduino.

  3. […] 1am London time, I gave a quick but bleary-eyed intro to Pachube to the crowd at FutureLabCamp. In Zurich Thomas Amberg and kiilo were keeping up the pace at the MechArtLab, working with cress, worms and […]

  4. […] Beginning: Connecting some data-sensing to the net, but what? During a 24h pachube hackathon in the MechArtLab, Zurich, in 2011 we were focusing on IoT and live data streaming using (or not […]


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