After brainstorming, there were a couple ideas we had for the topic “Naught-o-mation”. We shared a couple ideas with some other teams and our last was a smartphone cleaner. With the topic being “Naught-o-mation” we thought the latter would make the most sense seeing as nowadays smartphones have become integrated in everyone’s daily lives and through that a part of the household.
iClean: an all-around smartphone washing station
“Wash away your millennial sins with the iClean. This machine doesn’t only clean away the materialistic dirt on your phone but also your social media trash. “
Published on: March 6, 2018 |
Author: Long Yan |
Categories: 2018a, Best Projects
“Gardening – the typical hobby of a computer science student. /s”
was probably the first impression most of us had. How could we possibly build something cool with the topic “garden” in mind? Especially we – two young-ish men – who think about nothing but action/sports and haven’t seen a garden in ages..
At first, everything which came into our minds were things like intelligent scarecrows, water dispensers or seed slingers – simple iterations of different auxiliary tools for the default gardener. Effective and usable ideas, but nothing mindblowing. This continued until the combined brainstorming session.
Oh but still, all the power to you active gardeners – you stop the cities from becoming a grey pessimistic mess of concrete!
The Choice
At the time for the brainstorming session we had 2 possible ideas which stuck. A remote control of a water dispenser mechanism and an implementation of a game called “Wikinger Chess”. None which we were thrilled with, the water dispenser was “too boring” and the “Wikinger Chess” was kind of really far fetched. Luckily during the combined brainstorming session we got an awesome idea, which pleased both of us. The combination of a hanging plotter and the art of living walls with moss.
A unique-ish implementation and application of vertical gardens.
this is Anja and Peter, Media – Informatics Bachelorette and Master, we finally made it and got our spot at the SWH-Practical Course, this year featuring the awesome topic: “ROBOTANICS: Machines that improve garden work or make staying outside more enjoyable” Wait… What?
Gardening and going outside? We are city kids playing video games all day. We don’t even know what the heck you can do on a Wiesn except drinking beer. But alright, we are here for tinkering some nice gadgets right? Lets figure it out!
So since we established our lack of gardening knowledge, the project had to somehow revolve around our urbanism. So how does the city and gardening mix? Well there are those small green strips before my appartment where some of the residents planted a bunch of flowers. How is that called again? Ooh right, GuerillaGardening! We got a starting point.
Our topic „robotanics“ also included machines, that make staying outside more ejoyable. Since my partner Philip and myself are not considering ourselves to have a green thumb, we were trying to improve activities with technology, that we love doing in the garden, when it came to brainstorming.
Published on: September 19, 2017 |
Author: Tatsiana Kocharava |
Categories: 2017b, Best Projects, Projects
From the brainstorming to our great idea
For the implementation of the project, we decided to use a vintage telephone from the 1970s.
It should become the first minimalistic retro smartphone, which is to be extended by five features 😀. LED lamps are used to indicate the results of the pocket calculator and the mode you are currently using (for example, clock, radio, alarm or computer). They also illuminate together with the vibration alarm for the handset.
After the topic was announced (“Something old, something new, …”) we tried to come up with old things. Since an old telephone had already been picked by another group we initially planned to modify an old typewriter. But the neatest idea we had was to make it type on its own, which, despite beeing a lot of work, would have been pretty obvious and has been done before. So we decided to build something simple. A mirror is old. An infinity mirror is old. A smart mirror is old. But we haven’t seen a (mind) bending smart infinity mirror before.
The Concept
The concept of an infinity mirror is rather old. One mirror in the back, a partly translucent mirror in the front, a LED stripe in between and voilà – infinity mirror illusion. When we tilt one mirror, the “infinity tunnel” bends. And finally, one thing I always wanted to know: “Is it possible to inject light from behind the rear mirror?” – It is!
We had a lot of ideas at first, but our goal was to take something old, give it new life and make it highly interactive. We we’re both mediainformatic students after all and just had Interaction Design in the last semester – so it just had to be very interactive. (more…)
YO! We are Matze and Flo, both master students in media informatics and human-computer interaction. As we are strongly influenced by the hip hop culture, respectively graffiti culture, we are very proud to introduce the world’s first midi-graffiti-can-drumset: The Graff-O-Phon.
The Graff-O-Phon generates sounds with a solenoid that shoots on graffiti cans and is attached to a servo motor (vertical movement) which in turn is mounted on top of the shaft of a stepper motor (horizontal movement). This way the solenoid is able to hit the graffiti cans on several positions. Depending on the fill levels of the cans and the hitting positions, we generate twelve sounds in total.
Enough said! Fasten your seatbelt and check out the video: