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Jnx is an augmented, tactile interface for stress relief, in the form of a plush doll. The core idea of Jnx is based around the concept of squeezing something, much like stress busters, which is emulated by squeezing the dolls throat.

The look and feel of Jnx is inspired by sack puppets and voodoo dolls to add a mystical aura to the interaction. The interface emulates a voodoo doll like behavior by allowing the user to strangle it or twist it arms and legs. The doll responds to the users actions in the form of audio playback.

Testing the audio Wave Shield from adafruit. It took a while to get it working because strangely the USB cables I got from Staples don’t work with it. Very weird. Anyway here’s the first test with the looped audio example.

Some initial prototypes for jnx the stress doll.

Look and feel

Materials:

Implementation

4 Flex sensors, a force sensor and an RGB LED. The LED changes color depending on how much pressure is applied to the force sensor or how much the flex sensors are bent – I still need to work this out in the code. Currently, the mp3’s are triggered from the computer using Processing but eventually they will be triggered from the SD card on the Wave Shield.

Autopsy of a toy that does an annoying chicken dance.

An Arduino sound project, Diver is an instrument inspired by old Analog Sequencers and Theremins. It allows creating a four-note looped melody which can be manipulated in real-time with knobs that can assign upto 5 octaves for each note. Each knob lights up to indicate it’s position in the loop.

The top of Diver houses a sensor which can be used to control the tempo of the loop in real-time. Use Diver in live performances or at home to produce awesome loops, melodies and special effects.

Sales Sheet

Videos

Photos

Second prototype for the theremin style instrument. It is more of a sequencer now with 4 POT’s for changing frequencies in a looped melody and a sensor changing the tempo.

This is the first implementation prototype of an instrument inspired by a theremin. The POT changes the frequency and the sensor adds another frequency to the mix. The idea is to create a theremin and an analog sequencer hybrid. I want to add 4 potentiometers to generate a looping melody and using the sensor to alter or add to it.

The IR sensor fades the LED’s in and out and changes the frequency sent to the speaker.

The POT fades the blue LED in and out, increases/decreases the blinking speed of the green LED and changes the speed and frequency of the sound on the speaker.

I tested the Tweetlite on 2 potential users. They both thought the product was marketable, would appeal to the Twitter community and gave me some great feedback.