der hess » english http://blog.derhess.de am medialen werkeln Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:00:38 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Book review: Adobe Flex – Training from the source http://blog.derhess.de/2011/12/16/book-review-adobe-flex-training-from-the-source/ http://blog.derhess.de/2011/12/16/book-review-adobe-flex-training-from-the-source/#comments Fri, 16 Dec 2011 10:20:58 +0000 admin http://blog.derhess.de/?p=1736
  • Book review: Developing Flex 4 Components
  • An Adobe Air Component for the Vimeo Moogaloop API
  • Book review: Generative Gestaltung
    • ]]>     A couple of weeks ago I read the book Flex 4 - Training from the source. It is the officially introduction book for Flex 4 from Adobe.  I was very curious about the book, because I started learning Flex 3 with no good start. For Flex 4 I wanted to learn it how I like to learn new things.

    Content review:

    The books starts with the typical introduction about Rich Internet Applications. I skipped this chapter, because it is always the same bla bla... The chapters 2 talks about the new Flash Builder IDE. Even I was pretty familiar with the IDE I could find some nice features during reading this chapters. So I learnt already something new. Especially, the chapter 3 and 4 gave me a really good introduction and understanding about the new layout architecture and component infrastructure. The chapters Handling Events, Using Remote XML Data, Creating Classes are not so interesting for an already experienced Flex Developer. The difference between Flex 3 and Flex 4 is not big in these cases. The chapter about Data Binding was good to read again, because Binding is very helpful but sometimes not so easy to deal with. I highly recommend the chapter 10 about DataGroups and Lists and the chapter 12 about Item Renderes. On these topics the change from Flex 3 to Flex 3 is very big. Unfortunately, the chapter 15 about Formatters and Validators is pretty outdatet, because Flex 4.5 offers new Spark based Formatters and Validators. The last three chapters about Skinning and custom Actionscript components are very basic written. For beginners easy to understand and experienced Flex Developers get an idea about the differences between Flex 3 and Flex 4 component development.

    Structure:

    I have to admit I am keen on the book structure. The chapters are structured like school lessons. Every lessons has an approximate time, which works very well in my case. Additionally, it is very useful for organizing the learning with your daily schedule. However, every end of a chapter provides a good summary of the learnt content. So you automatically repeat the learnt stuff. The code examples are nice described and easy to work with, too.

    Result:

    Flex 4 - Training from the source is a really good book for Flex 4 beginners.  Already experienced Flex Developers can get bored about some content. It depends on your learning type. I like reading books, so for me it was perfect to get an overview. If you like more reading online resources or watching video tutorials, then go for it. There are enough documentations and tutorials available.

    Related posts:

    1. Book review: Developing Flex 4 Components
    2. An Adobe Air Component for the Vimeo Moogaloop API
    3. Book review: Generative Gestaltung

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    ]]>     http://blog.derhess.de/2011/12/16/book-review-adobe-flex-training-from-the-source/feed/ 2 "     My most important Twitter Messages #12 http://blog.derhess.de/2011/11/26/my-most-important-twitter-messages-12/ http://blog.derhess.de/2011/11/26/my-most-important-twitter-messages-12/#comments Sat, 26 Nov 2011 20:45:57 +0000 admin http://blog.derhess.de/?p=1723
  • My most important Twitter Messages #6
  • My most important Twitter Messages #10
  • My most important Twitter Messages #11
    • ]]>     Twitter von der hess
    A small summary of my Twitter messages from August - November 2011:

    Allgemein (General)

    Generative Art:

    • Our lecture from the "Design the Future" series at Carnegie Mellon University is now online

    Info Design and Visualization

    UX and Interaction Design:

    Projekte und Experimente (Projects and experiments)

    Neue Technologie (new Technologies)

    Programmierung und Software Design (Programming)

    Physical Computing

    Game Developing:

    Flash and Flex

    Related posts:

    1. My most important Twitter Messages #6
    2. My most important Twitter Messages #10
    3. My most important Twitter Messages #11

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    ]]>     http://blog.derhess.de/2011/11/26/my-most-important-twitter-messages-12/feed/ 0 "     My most important Twitter Messages #11 http://blog.derhess.de/2011/08/31/my-most-important-twitter-messages-11-2/ http://blog.derhess.de/2011/08/31/my-most-important-twitter-messages-11-2/#comments Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:00:29 +0000 admin http://blog.derhess.de/?p=1683
  • My most important Twitter Messages #6
  • My most important Twitter Messages #4
  • My most important Twitter Messages #5
    • ]]>     Twitter von der hess
    A small summary of my Twitter messages from June - August 2011:

    Allgemein (General)

    Generative Art:

    Info Design and Visualization

    UX and Interaction Design:

    Projekte und Experimente (Projects and experiments)

    Neue Technologie (new Technologies)

    Programmierung und Software Design (Programming)

    Physical Computing

    Game Developing:

    Flash and Flex

    Related posts:

    1. My most important Twitter Messages #6
    2. My most important Twitter Messages #4
    3. My most important Twitter Messages #5

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    ]]>     http://blog.derhess.de/2011/08/31/my-most-important-twitter-messages-11-2/feed/ 0 "     Flash talks to Max MSP via OSC http://blog.derhess.de/2011/08/16/flash-talks-to-max-msp-via-osc/ http://blog.derhess.de/2011/08/16/flash-talks-to-max-msp-via-osc/#comments Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:38:25 +0000 admin http://blog.derhess.de/?p=1549
  • My most important Twitter Messages #9
  • My most important Twitter Messages #6
    • ]]>

    As I already mentioned  in an earlier blog post, for reimplementing my "Sound drawing" project to Flash I had to create a communication layer between Max/Msp and Flash. In this blog post I will report about my results and some technical information. If you want to jump directly to the technical part, please skip the part "Why am I doing this".

    Why am I doing this?

    I want to have access to more performance in general, I want to have access to more technical advanced stuff, I want an easy way for using external hardware devices, and last point, I want to collaborate with other media artists (without changin the working environment).

    Flash is a very nice for working with graphics, videos and other media based stuff. That is the total strength of Flash, but it fails in some performance issues (compared to C++) and some algorithmic libraries (compared to libraries like IanniX, Math, OpenCV, and Sphinx4). One motivation for me in this project lies to combine the advantages of these worlds. But I don't want to change the usage of these libraries. Some libraries have to be executes as an exe Application and they just perform great in C++, and not in a Flash environment (in some cases Alchemy could be a solution).

    Next point of performance is creating a scalable approach for media installation. Some media installation can't  be run by only one machine.  You need more computers, which talks to each other. For this reason, I put my focus on the Open Sound Control network protocol. As the OSC team drescribed, this protocol is made for communication between computers and media devices. It is often used in very robust environments and the documentation is very well, too. Almost every creative coding software supports the OSC communication, which is very good for collaborating with other media artists (everyone can still work in the preferred software environment).

    Some hardware can already talk OSC or it uses an communication software like TUIO, iOSC, AndroidOSC. For Midi controllers you can use graphical environments like Max/Msp or PureData. These softwares have directly access to the midi hardware and can configure the most things. Afterwards you send the midi data from Max/Msp (or PureData) to Flash via OSC. In this way Flash gets access to a new level of external devices...

    Flash talks OSC

    First I was a little bit scared, because I thought I have to dive into the nerdie byte array socket programming part in Flash. Luckily, I found information about the FlOSC project. FlOSC is Java based application, which receives the OSC messages and routing them to the Flash XML socket. There are some great tutorials available by Eric Socolofsky and Tim Poulin (part 1, part 2, part 3). After watching all of these tutorials, I was a little bit scared of the reliable performance of this approach. The Flash XML socket is nice for chat applications or some round-based multiplayer games, but for realtime data transmission I heard bad things...

    Luckily again, some time passed since FlOSC were created and Adobe provided a new binary socket API for the Flash Player. Things became even better. Since Version 2 of Adobe Air, Air supports the network UDP layer for really fast data transmission. I have not to mention that the Flash open-source is great ;-) , so I could find easily a nice library.  The tuio flash library solved almost everything I needed. I had to write my own OSCListener, which is great explained in the tuio guide and in its comments. During development I had sometimes problems with the binding of the DatagramSocket. It was obvious that the (binded) port was never closed. I had to wait until Windows shutted it down or just do it manually. Unfortunately, the UDPConnector class does not provide a close function. Therefore I added a close function by myself at the end of the class. Extending or creating a custom UDP Connector was not possible, because all members of the class are private.

    public function close():void {
    if(this.connection) {
           this.connection.close();
    }
}

    Max/MSP talks OSC

    After this minor coding everything worked fine. So I could jump to Max/MSP. Using OSC in Max/Msp is not very difficult. The documentation is pretty good and the provided example file helps a lot. I just extended the example with one function. If the max patch receives successfully a message from the Flash Client (Adobe Air app), then send a message back to the Flash client.  For the second example you have to install the fiddle plugIn (for Windows) for Max/Msp.

     

    Max/Msp and Flash in love

    I created two mini examples. Example one just demonstrates sending messages between Flash and Max/Msp. The second example is little bit more complicated and shoud give you an idea of a real life project. The max patch analyzes an audio file and sends the pitch tracking + volume tracking data to the Flash client. The flash client reads the data and draw it on the canvas. As you can see on my screen capture video above. The performance of this test application is pretty solid and robust. Now imagine instead of the tracking data we send midi data or just some image processing data. Or we do some heavy image processing on one machine and send the data to another machine, which only renders the Flash output... I guess there are many new things possible :-)

    Download Code

    The source code is available on my google project SVN or download the zip file. For the examples you must have installed Max/Msp 5, fiddle plugIn (for Windows), Flex SDK 4.5, Flash CS5 or Flash Builder 4. The code examples also requires the additional ActionScript libraries MinimalComps, MonsterDebugger, and TUIO Flash.

    Related posts:

    1. My most important Twitter Messages #9
    2. My most important Twitter Messages #6

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    ]]>     http://blog.derhess.de/2011/08/16/flash-talks-to-max-msp-via-osc/feed/ 1 "     Arduino Prototype: The “plate” Gaming Device http://blog.derhess.de/2011/08/02/arduino-prototype-the-plate-gaming-device/ http://blog.derhess.de/2011/08/02/arduino-prototype-the-plate-gaming-device/#comments Tue, 02 Aug 2011 11:39:22 +0000 admin http://blog.derhess.de/?p=1614
  • Moodumbrella – a self em-powered device for well-being
    • ]]>     For two or three years I wanted to work seriously with Arduino. During this time I have done the same basic LED exercises again and again. Just for keeping alive my basic knowledge. Finally and luckily, I had to visit the Advanced Microcontroller lecture by Laurent Mignonneau. Laurent is the definition of a Geek himself. Not much talking, just doing, and a fucking huge amount of knowledge in electronics and programming. The assignment for his lecture was to create SOMETHING with a low resolution screen. Really advanced examples of a low resolution screen are the androp project (Making of | strobo animation) or Laurent's solar display (concept).

    Plate Game Device Front

    Device Front

    device form

    Device shot

    Plate Game Device opened
    Device opened

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Plate Game Device opened

    Device opened back

    Plate under the hood

    Under the hood

    Plate internal parts

    Internal parts

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Hot glue fixing
    Hot glue fixing
    display resistors
    display resistors

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    However, one day in May I woke up and had this game device idea, which looks like a plate or a steering wheel. After some consideration the idea felt good. The very simple form allows me to integrate a low resoultion screen very easily. Furthermore the usage range of this kind of device would be broad. I was very happy. For the size of the device I got inspiration of a real plate. It has the perfect size for not entering the private area of other players, but still feel connected to them. The metaphor came to me when I observed the interaction between a waiter and his guests in a restaurant. When the waiter hands the plate to one guest, there exist for a short time a connection between them. The connection is mediated and supported by the plate. The physical distance provided by the plate is small enough for feeling welcome, but also big enough for respecting the private zone. For this reason the form of the device is not only usable for a remote control, it is even usable for a multiplayer gaming device. In this context I got a childhood memory... uh yeah... fighting all the time with my sister for the power of the TV remote control. That memory brought me to a new version of the game "tug of war". The plate has four handholds. For each player one. In the middle of the device the screen is placed. The screen shows two lines, like a cross.  The aim of the game is to pull the device hard enough, that one line (the opposite line of the player) comes closer. If the line jumps out of the screen the player has won. An arrow shows it. Afterwards the game starts again. I uploaded a short video for getting an idea and see the device in action.

    The technical implementation of my device is very simple, I have to admit... The wood and some other fixing stuff I found in the trash of the university and the Linzer DIY stores. I had almost the feeling of Gambiologia ;-) However, I cut the wood our university wood workshop. Further parts were:

    During development I ran into some pitfalls. My soldering skills are not very great and for this reason at least four or five times a cable lost the connection... In the end I stabilized the cable connection with hot glue (look at the pictures). That worked very well and I had no such problems anymore. Laurent gave me the advice to avoid cables everywhere I can. The possibility that the cable lost the connection is very high. Using plugs and connectors are good alternatives... So for the next projects I try my best to consider it.  Second pitfall was related to programming. I got a Arduino Nano Board from Laurent. I tried to replace the Nano board with my Uno board. But unfortunatley the provided Arduino Code for the LED Dot Matrix messed up. In the end the Arduino Code for Nano board was not compatible with my new Arduino Uno board. I don't know the exact reason. May one of my readers have an idea?! I would appreciate it. :-) Next issue, not a very big one, was dealing with the accelerometer data. Every motion caused a motion in the opposite direction. You can see the values at my Excel File. I implemented a simple time checking code for the sensor. It works good for the first tests, but maybe one of you can recommend me a good library or code snippet for dealing with accelerometer values...?! The source code of this project is available as usual on my Google SVN. I am pretty happy with the result of my first Arduino project. Even the feedback I got from the other students were great. So I would like to continue the development. For a much better wood cut I hope I can use the laser cutter at the AEC or the Fab lab in Berlin. The device should get some extensions, like pressure sensors on each handhold. Adding four InraRed LEDs on the back of the device. The IR LEDs are interesting for some (3D) tracking projects a la Johnny Chung Lee. I hope I can implement all these ideas... Happy coding and soldering!

    Related posts:

    1. Moodumbrella – a self em-powered device for well-being

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    ]]>     http://blog.derhess.de/2011/08/02/arduino-prototype-the-plate-gaming-device/feed/ 0 "     Processing meets Box2D and blob detection http://blog.derhess.de/2011/06/27/processing-meets-box2d-and-blob-detection/ http://blog.derhess.de/2011/06/27/processing-meets-box2d-and-blob-detection/#comments Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:55:18 +0000 admin http://blog.derhess.de/?p=1601
    For the Programming II Workshop at our Interface Culture department I decided to do an small experiment with Box 2D. For a long time I wanted to play around with Box 2D. Especially merging real world objects with virtual object fascinates me very much. I don't like so much the common Augmented Reality stuff. However, some stuff is really cool and inspires me. Here are some projects I got my inspiration from: EdgeBomber, Laser Sound test, Phun, Crayon Physics, 2d Sketches becomes 3d Reality, ILoveSketch, MotionBeam, Tangible Fire Controlls.

    Now talking about the technical stuff. In my experiment I am using the Blobscanner library and the Box2D code of Daniel Shiffman. It is really a small experiment, I just wanted to check out how difficult it is to combine camera data and virtual data. For the first test I am using a easy .jpg file with 3 rectangles. This examples works pretty well. The next map has some diagonal rectangles. The first problems appears. The upper right rectangles are drawn in the wrong direction. This is the reason why the physics simulation fails. At the moment I am using the Surface object of Box2D for drawing more complex objects. For the surface object is the direction of drawing very important. You have to draw counter clockwise. So  that the normal vectors does not point inside the object (check chapter 4.4 Polygon Shapes). Even using a polygon object would make more sense instead of using the surface object...

    Another issue I have, is the correct recognition of the shapes. This problem is caused by two challenges. First challenge is to order the edge points array correctly. I get only edge points and I don't know is it the right or the left side of the object. My sorting algoritm is not implemented very well. For this reason some of my recognitions fails. But for doing a fast check on simple objects to get an idea, it was enough. However, this paper about edge detection can solve my problem, or I just have to implement a "find the shortest distance algorithm". If you have some better advices, please leave a comment. Thx! The second challenge is minimizing the size of the edge points array. For this I found a nice article: Line Generalization (Smoothing, Simplifying). I ported the ActionScript code to processing and it seemed to work. Tough a better approach could be to vectorize the camera data. Nicolas Barradeau wrote two nice blog posts about vectorization v0 and vectorization v1. His code I defintely have to check out. I guess there are some  hidden solutions for my problems.

    So far about my experiment. My code is online on my google project site or download it. Please consider that my code is far far away from perfect. Big thanks to the great tutorial writers. I shit love the ActionScript community and the processing community ;-) Knowledge sharing, ahoi!!

    No related posts.

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    ]]>     http://blog.derhess.de/2011/06/27/processing-meets-box2d-and-blob-detection/feed/ 3 "     My most important Twitter Messages #10 http://blog.derhess.de/2011/06/09/my-most-important-twitter-messages-10/ http://blog.derhess.de/2011/06/09/my-most-important-twitter-messages-10/#comments Thu, 09 Jun 2011 10:27:54 +0000 admin http://blog.derhess.de/?p=1585
  • My most important Twitter Messages #5
  • My most important Twitter Messages #6
  • My most important Twitter Messages #12
    • ]]>     Twitter von der hess
    A small summary of my Twitter messages from March - June 2011:

    Allgemein (General)

    Generative Art:

    Info Design and Visualization

    UX and Interaction Design:

    Projekte und Experimente (Projects and experiments)

    Neue Technologie (new Technologies)

    Programmierung und Software Design (Programming)

    Physical Computing

    Game Developing:

    Flash and Flex

    Related posts:

    1. My most important Twitter Messages #5
    2. My most important Twitter Messages #6
    3. My most important Twitter Messages #12

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    ]]>     http://blog.derhess.de/2011/06/09/my-most-important-twitter-messages-10/feed/ 0 "     Moodumbrella – a self em-powered device for well-being http://blog.derhess.de/2011/05/05/moodumbrella-a-self-em-powered-device-for-well-being/ http://blog.derhess.de/2011/05/05/moodumbrella-a-self-em-powered-device-for-well-being/#comments Thu, 05 May 2011 10:00:22 +0000 admin http://blog.derhess.de/?p=1560
  • Arduino Prototype: The “plate” Gaming Device
  • My most important Twitter Messages #5
  • My most important Twitter Messages #6
    • ]]>     During the lectures Fashionable Technology I and II from Sabine Seymour, Andrea Suter and me improved the common usage of an umbrella. In the end we developed a concept of a self em-powered device for people’s well being. Our umbrella using the approaches of light therapy and autonomous power resources.

    moodumbrella prototype

    moodumbrella

    moodumbrella detail

    moodumbrella detail

    moodumbrella in use

    moodumbrella in use

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    We created a prototype for interviews and user testings and we made a survey in Linz during a rainy day. The Austrain people were very sceptical and did not want to be asked about their happiness on rainy days. However, we were able to get some very useful feedback. The video below will show you examples of the feedback mentioned.

    In the end we wrote paper about the details of light therapy and discussing mobile energy resources for smart devices.

    Download the moodumbrella paper

    Related posts:

    1. Arduino Prototype: The “plate” Gaming Device
    2. My most important Twitter Messages #5
    3. My most important Twitter Messages #6

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    ]]>     http://blog.derhess.de/2011/05/05/moodumbrella-a-self-em-powered-device-for-well-being/feed/ 3 "     My most important Twitter Messages #9 http://blog.derhess.de/2011/03/24/my-most-important-twitter-messages-9/ http://blog.derhess.de/2011/03/24/my-most-important-twitter-messages-9/#comments Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:03:53 +0000 admin http://blog.derhess.de/?p=1551
  • My most important Twitter Messages #6
  • My most important Twitter Messages #11
  • My most important Twitter Messages #4
    • ]]>     Twitter von der hess
    A small summary of my Twitter messages from January - March 2011:

    Allgemein (General)

    Generative Art:

    Info Design and Visualization

    UX and Interaction Design:

    Projekte und Experimente (Projects and experiments)

    Neue Technologie (new Technologies)

    Programmierung und Software Design (Programming)

    Physical Computing

    Game Developing:

    Flash and Flex

    Related posts:

    1. My most important Twitter Messages #6
    2. My most important Twitter Messages #11
    3. My most important Twitter Messages #4

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    ]]>     http://blog.derhess.de/2011/03/24/my-most-important-twitter-messages-9/feed/ 0 "     Harmony in Max / MSP with multiple brushes http://blog.derhess.de/2011/02/23/harmony-in-max-msp-with-multiple-brushes/ http://blog.derhess.de/2011/02/23/harmony-in-max-msp-with-multiple-brushes/#comments Wed, 23 Feb 2011 11:47:33 +0000 admin http://blog.derhess.de/?p=1524
  • Mr. Doobs Harmony drawing APP ported to MAX / MSP
  • Mr. Doobs Harmony project ported to Flash AS3
  • My most important Twitter Messages #9
    • ]]>     For my interactive installation "Sound Drawings" I decided to use the Harmony Drawing application. Meanwhile, the single brush version worked pretty stable with the sound analyzing. There was still one thing missing. It would be much cooler if more than one person can draw on the canvas. From the technical view it was very easy to implement. In the beginning I was a little bit scared if the realtime feedback is still good with more brushes at the same time. It was! For this reason here is the source code and my versions of testing for you.

    I prepared a screencast for getting an idea and overview how it works. The principles are exactly the same as in the first version. The only exception is the "brushID" as a new parameter. Every API call uses this syntax:

    apiFunctionName brushID parameter1 parameter2 ...

    For creating a new brush use the command "setBrush brushID brushType". Afterwards you can use the API command "setCoordinate brushID xPos yPos" for drawing programmatically. If you want to use the mouse for drawing you must use the API command "selectBrush brushID" before drawing directly on the canvas!

    All JavaScript codes and Max / MSP patches are included in the example file. For the sound drawing patch you must install the Max MSP Fiddler object, before you can try experimenting.

    Download Harmony with multible brushes

    Related posts:

    1. Mr. Doobs Harmony drawing APP ported to MAX / MSP
    2. Mr. Doobs Harmony project ported to Flash AS3
    3. My most important Twitter Messages #9

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    ]]>     http://blog.derhess.de/2011/02/23/harmony-in-max-msp-with-multiple-brushes/feed/ 0 "