Fiddleing Surface
Concept
The in 2016 upcoming Fidget Cube is a device that supports different tangible areas.The idea of adding an additional audible level led me to a design that I call "Fiddleing Surface". It consists of different tactile media which are connected by a wooden frame. The pickup is fixed to the wooden frame and connected to a Raspberry hidden by the construction. A special PD-Patch is running on the Raspberry to apply interisting filters to the output of the piezo microphone. With earphones plugged in tothe raspberry, the user can now hear his touches.
Construction
Methods
For the audio processing I combined different effects and filters. I used
- sine pitch
- low and high pass filter
- reverb (echo)
Implementation in Pure Data
My sketch consists out of a main sketch that is directing several subpatches. Therefore new effects can be easily added to the program.
control of channels
sine-pitch
low and high pass filter
reverb
Demo
Discussion
I wanted to build a device that uses the piezo microphone and a raspberry to create relaxing mood with sounds and tactile media. The result is a first feasible approach. In my opinion listening to the device is surprisingly immersive. But that's a purely subjective assessment. For further improvement, it would be necessary to develop a user study that verifies the benefits.
- The device is too big and difficult to transport. The sound processing should be optimized to a system on a chip, do that the whole processing could fit in a regular fidget cube.
- The audio processing doesn't show the potential yet. There a still too many random values. Instead of randomness I would like to use more input signals from the user. I think it would be cool to add harmonics dependend on the orientation of the device, which can be measured by a gyroscope.
Conclusion
Download
You can download here the software for the "fiddleing surface": File:fs_patch.zip