Variable DC Power Supply

I completed this project for Eric Rosenthal's Basic Analog Circuits class. It was an exercise in point-to-point soldering, but after completion I decided to build an enclosure for it with a voltmeter I bought from Adafruit Industries.

You can also see a complete post and tutorial on my blog post at MAKE: Magazine

Retro-Reflective Flashlight Tag Variant

This is a variant of flashlight tag that I originally developed with Eszter Ozsvald for the Big Games class at ITP. It stemmed from the frustration of trying to play flashlight tag as a kid. There was no way to reliably verify that someone had been tagged. This changes that.

We used iron-on retroreflective material to create velcro letters that stick to the players' arm bands. Each player picks out letters to spell a word and put it on his/her arm and then run off into the darkness before the game starts. Once the game starts, the object is to shine your flashlight on your opponent's word. If you can spot it and yell out their word, then they're out!

I play-tested the game this past August with around 20 campers at Frost Valley YMCA in the Catskills. Not only did they enjoy playing it, but we even collectively came up with some interesting and successful game variants. I'm planning on presenting the game to the Northeast YMCA Directors' Conference in January (also being held at Frost Valley).

Broke the Water Cooler, Fixed the Water Cooler

In my zeal to hydrate, I pulled a bit too hard on the school's water cooler spigot, and broke the durn thing off. But within minutes, I had it working again, though with quite the kludged together solution. They should have it fixed by wednesday. Until then, I left instructions on how to use this new contraption.

Modular Scrap Metal Percussion Instrument

The first assignment for my class "New Interfaces in Musical Expression" was to build an instrument in one week and perform a one-minute performance using it in class.

I based the instrument on a solid steel piece of aircraft surplus I picked up at the Pratt and Whitney Surplus Store. This piece made an appearance in another work of mine, the Fruit Powered Sound Generator. What can I say, its become a favorite.

The piece has two rows of machined screw holes. I taped a contact mic to it and just started screwing in parts from my scrap metal bin. After some experimentation, I found that I was able to get a few tonal sounds, and some interesting percussive sounds from the instrument. I hooked the whole thing through a distortion to give it a bit more industrial grit, then a delay pedal set to a long delay time. It was fun to do, and could be interesting in the future because I could swap out parts depending on the type of sound I want.