Here is another video, courtesy of Nobuyuki, documenting students' progress on their mini interactive projects.

We are super excited to announce that our pilot project will be starting in a few days, on March 1st. Stay tuned for more updates.

In the "

We were both really excited about making it, and we had a handful of good ideas to add upon it, but we knew with only a week to work on it, we would need to pick and choose. It also didnt help that I didnt know much about programming or processing, so we would have to leave most of that up to Liam by himself, which he said he was ok with. I tried to add as much as I could in terms of design and such, and when I wasnt brainstorming or performing small tasks to help Liam along, I would practice small tasks on Processing, which, by the end, I discovered was not as simple to learn as I thought it might be, which at least was confirmed as normal by Liam. I did however manage to make a prototype of the buttons we added to the interface screen, where you could change modes between the draw, soccer, and bug squash functions. The hardest part about the design however, was incorporating the EEG piece to the project. It was pretty much problem after problem with the headset, from lacking the proper libraries, to getting the raw data feed, to actually receiving the data on the program. In the end though, we had a product that everyone loved, as we knew we would get all along. My only hope is that in the next studio, if we use the EEGs again, that they improve in their ability to ACCURATELY read the different frequencies. Im looking forward to the next studio with equal fervor.

Studio in Review: iMat

by Liam Brady 1/13/12 Im going to say this right now. The iMat is the coolest thing I have ever made, ever. The fact that it shows where people are and allows us to interact with it in such fun ways is just amazing. It was also awesome watching other people be completely distracted from their project because they were playing with the soccer game. But it wasnt all interactivity awesomeness. I wanted to get the Mindwave to associate with a certain person, or blob, which would involve complicated blob tracking. I spent all day last Sunday trying to get it to work, and in the end, I completely gave up because it was too hard. So I just used a blob tracking thing that didnt remember who was where. Oh well. Then we ran into problems with the Mindwave not actually working. These things were experimental to say the least. Syncing issues, accuracy problems, you name it, we had it, so we ended up using Seans computer to run the Mindwave software, and then we had it send the data over the interwebs to the Mac Mini that was the brain of the rig. That worked beautifully, finally.

There were three toys in the iMat program: paint (color controlled with brainwave), soccer (goal height controlled with brainwave), and bugs (speed controlled with brainwave). The soccer toy was everyones favorite by far, probably because a lot of people in NuVu play soccer. Yet even though some of them may have been great at soccer, they were awful at virtual soccer. Either that or they were on the side of the field that had the disadvantage. Since the ball collision detection goes from top left to bottom right, during a clash the person on the left would get detected first, so the ball would prefer to go to the right, making it harder for the person playing on the right side.

Getting the paint to leave perfect lines as trails was too hard, since that would involve getting the blob id, and then remembering for each blob where it last was. That would involve the failed blob tracking thing I tried on Sunday. So yeah, thats about it. Presentation went well (will talk about it in the Friday entry) and it was a lot of fun. I will definitely continue expanding this project, either for my final project, or in my spare time.

The "Do-It-Yourself Devices" studio made hackers out of students who learnt to take any ordinary or sub-ordinary object and "hack" it (or transform it) to fit their particular needs and imagined idea. The studio began with NuVu coaches/MIT Alums/Discovery Channel hosts Jeff Lieberman and Zoz Brooks introducing the basics of electronics, microcontrollers and computer programming (using the Arduino environment). Students then learnt how to integrate the computer with external sensors (such as switches, buttons, heat/temperature, light, touch) and actuators (such as motors, lights, speakers, fans) as a basis for doing anything they desired. The studio collectively compiled a massive list of potential projects and, after discussing all the possibilities, narrowed down the list to five projects that could be completed in around 7 days. The projects that made the cut were: 1. Human Avoiding Chair 2. Adjustable Backpack 3. Keep-Awake Device 4. Xbox Controller Cooler 5. Accelerometer Wah Pedal All five projects hacked used objects with varying types of external sensors and actuators to perform their new desired intent. 1. Human Avoiding Chair: Tired of dealing with lazy humans? The Human Avoiding Chair uses 5 infrared, motion-detecting sensors to send signals to a motorized wheel that rotates away from anyone approaching the chair and attempting to sit on it. 2. Adjustable Backpack: Frustrated by the ubiquitous need to manually adjust backpack straps, the Adjustable Backpack team used dual left and right button-controls to loosen and tighten the straps effortlessly. 3. Keep-Awake Device: As a cool wearable safety device, the Keep-Awake Device used an accelerometer to measure the tilt of a person's head while driving to trigger a LilyPad buzzer if the tilt was past a certain "dangerous" angle. 4. Xbox Controller Cooler: Sticky, wet palms while playing games on the Xbox can be an annoying aftermath post an intense virtual match-up. So one team used heat sensors mounted on the side of the Xbox controller to send signals to an internal fan that helped cool sweaty gamer palms. 5. Accelerometer Wah Pedal: And finally one team used an accelerometer mounted to the end of an electric guitar to control a wah pedal. By shaking one end of the guitar, a performer could initiate the wah-wah function, thereby creating an even more unique musical performance.

We are honored that NuVu and our amazing students were featured on CBS' "Future of Boston" series this week. Watch the video .

Anchorwoman Paula Ebben interviewed Saeed Arida (CEO) and NuVu's students Christian Hector, Marcia Zimmerman and Coach Derek Ham. Read more about Saeed's interview with Paula on CBS' website . 

 

You may not realize it, but you use units of measurement every day. Consider the following statements, does one of them strike you more than the other?

"I lost 100 dollars." versus "I lost 100 cents." "I'm 15 minutes late for school." versus "I'm 15 seconds late for school."

There's a HUGE difference between each of these statements, and it's because of the units. We use these "everyday" units so frequently we often forget they are even there. In the poem "Smart", by Shel Silverstein, he reminds of us of how smart we can be if we just ignore the units. I'll include an excerpt:

And then I took the quarters and traded them to Lou For three dimes--I guess he don't know That three is more than two!

This sounds ridiculous when we talk about money, because we all know money so well, we don't even think of dollars and cents as units anymore. We understand that 1 unit of dollars is equal to 100 units of cents. But what if I told you these mistakes happen more often than you think... Would you care if I told you I would charge you 1 cent per minute for your phone call, but actually billed you 1 dollar per minute? -- I hope so. If you don't catch the mistake, a 1 hour phone call could cost 100 dollars instead of 1 dollar. And after a month of chatting, you could be forced to pay 1000 dollars instead of 10 dollars. If you think this type of error is impossible, take for example what has come to be known as "Verizon Bad Math", and listen to the 30 minute track on this page. As the multiple sales assistants demonstrate, saying a number... "0.002" means nothing, without the units, without the dollar or cents. (This being said, I'm still a loyal Verizon customer). Unfortunately, we often take units for granted because we hear them in context: If someone says "spot me a 20," you might guess they're asking for a 20 dollar bill. If someone is holding an inch-ruler and says their foot is 10-long, you might guess their foot is 10 inches long. And, if someone says it's half past 6, you surely understand it's 6:30 am/pm. Even beyond our day-to-day lives, this complacency can carry over to the fields of engineering and science, fields based in mathematics and accuracy. The problem actually starts well before we ever get to college, and maybe even before high school... You might have noticed in your math or physics classes that you deal with a lot of equations. So many equations, that you just start to memorize them, hoping that your assignments will use units that play nicely with each other. Similarly, many engineering text books focus on the equations and are published with the understanding that certain units are used, but may not remind a reader for pages or chapters at a time. So, accidents can happen. In your physics class, you might calculate that a car traveling at 60 miles per hour for 1 minute, travels 60 x 1 = 60 miles. Hopefully you will realize that there are 60 minutes per hour, so you've actually traveled: 60[miles/hour] x (1 [hour]/60 [minutes]) = 1 [mile],.... before you turn your test in. In 1999, NASA lost a 123 million dollar Mars Orbiter, because one engineering team used English units (i.e. feet), but the other used metric (meters). A mission that undoubtedly took hundreds of people years of their lives, skipped-past Mars because the Orbiter's navigation system was designed in metric units, but it was being commanded in English units. So, the next time you find yourself saying a number, without units, do yourself a favor and say the units. You could be saving your future career, life, or just your pocket book from taking a dive. ============== Rate vs Non-Rates and Power vs Energy Money and time are usually the two most common units we use, and are therefore probably the easiest to think about. So, let me start there. If you were to win the lottery today and had to choose between two payment schemes, which would you choose: 1. Get paid $1000 dollars per hour. 2. Get paid $1000 dollars. -- I would want $1000 dollars per hour and hope that I live longer than an hour. The difference between these two choices is that the first one is given as rate. When we give a unit in terms of time, we call the resulting [derived] unit, a rate. In the first option, we would get paid $1000 dollars every hour potentially for the rest of our lives, but in the second option we would only get $1000 dollars only once. A rate that teenagers are intimately familiar with, esp. if they've gotten a speeding ticket is miles per hour (abbreviated mph.). A mile is a measurement of distance, but miles per hour (mph), is a rate that measures distance per unit time. Driving in a car, we use a mile to express how far we've gone, and we use the rate miles per hour, to measure how quickly we can move. In fact, instead of saying: "I'm driving at a speed of 100 miles per hour", I could say "I'm driving at a rate of 100 miles per hour." There is a large difference in meaning between a rate and a non-rate unit. It doesn't make any sense to say "I'm zipping down the highway at 100 miles." Likewise, referring back to money, it doesn't make any sense to say "I have 1000 dollars per second in my bank account!". A non-rate unit expresses a quantity you have, while a rate unit expresses how that quantity changes as time elapses. If you're confused, think back to the lottery example above. I wanted to make the distinction between a rate and non-rate unit clear because of some confusion we've had in our Fusion Energy class. Namely, I have heard statements like "We will use 100 Watts per day." If you're wondering what's wrong with that statement, keep reading. If you see what's wrong, congratulations, you've finished this mini lesson. If you are unsure of what Energy and Power are, do not fear, you won't really have to understand them here (there will be another mini-lesson about it). Just know that Energy and Power are two quantities we can measure, that are very related. But, first, some terminology. In the English language, we have names for quantities as well as the units with which we measure them. For example: * We can measure the quantity of Time using the units: seconds, minutes, hours, years, decades, etc... . * We measure the quantity of Distance using: inches, meters, feet, miles, etc..., and * We measure the quantity of Speed using: miles/hour, meters/second, knots, etc... Notice something weird about Speed? First, you should realize that it's a rate . Second, I want you to notice that we call the quantity of Distance per Time, "Speed". Third, some of the units are given as a ratio of other units, while knots, which is used to measure the speed of ships, is not a ratio at all. The idea I want to convey is that we have come up with names for lots of the quantities we encounter every-day. For example, nobody says "Check out how much distance my car can travel per second per second". No, instead we say "Check out how fast my car accelerates". The same thing goes for Energy and Power. Energy is to Distance as Power is to Speed. That is to say, the quantity we call "Power" is really just a shorter-name for the rate: "Energy per Time". In the metric system, we measure quantities of Energy using the unit "Joules". Since Power is an Energy rate, you should guess that we measure power in "Joules" over some unit of time. In fact, we measure power in "Joules per second." Now there are two points of confusion: 1. Instead of saying "Joules per second" every time we want to express a unit of power - we like naming things - so we say "Watts" instead. So instead of saying: "My computer requires 700 Joules per second of power." I could say "My computer requires 700 Watts of power." The meaning and quantities are exactly the same. 2. We will sometimes say: "We consume energy at the rate of ... Watts". Just know that when you hear "Watts", they're talking about power, even though the word 'energy' appears in the sentence. Which brings me back to why I started this lesson in the first place: "We will use 100 Watts per day" translates to "We will use 100 Joules per second... per day". It's like saying I make 10 dollars per hour... per day. Instead, the correct statement is just to say "We will use 100 Watts". If you wish to emphasize how long you'll need to draw that much power, you can say "We will use 100 Watts, 24-hours a day", meaning all day long, we'll be sucking-down 100 Joules of Energy every second. There are some other statements like "My battery stores 100 Watts", that are also wrong. The correct statement is "My battery stores 100 Joules". But, that will be clearer if you understand what Energy is...

Our Winter

Ever wondered what food sounds like in surround sound? Well, in the "







I'm Lovin' It by nuvustudio "I'm Lovin' It" Produced by Eddy Orazem, Alonso Richardson, AJ Simpson Vocals by Eddy Orazem, AJ Simpson Lyrics by Eddy Orazem, Alonso Richardson Food Sampled: Carrot munching, Chips crunching, Bacon sizzling, Potato Sac fall, Diet Coke exploding

For the past few weeks, we have been setting up a full kitchen equipped with cool machines, such as immersion circulator, combi oven, vacuum sealer, Vitamix, and many other chemicals. We are thrilled to have master chef Adam Melonas coach the "Reinventing Breakfast" studio with us. He will be collaborating with John Bagnula, Kris Bronner, and Yanni Loukissas. Here is Adam in action: