#practical experimentation

[projectseven-blog]

Twitter4j Library Trouble

The Twitter4j library which is pretty much essential to the workings of my project is proving to be very difficult to implement and understand. I have requested help on the usual processing forums and hopefully that will return something useful. At present however I am making very slow progress - if any!

I stated clearly in my brief that technology - particularly that which involves coding - was simply a means to an end. However at present Twitter4j does exactly what I want - I just need to figure out HOW to use it!

[projectseven-blog]

This is the first link that I have made between all the main components for my Prototype piece. I finally got the Twitter4j library working for me by using an open source example from open Processing sketch.

It searches Twitter for predefined phrases/words and then charts them out on a histogram. The more frequently a term is mentioned, the higher its respective bar will be. There are 5 categories in this example:

 "Whitney Houston","Jedward","Justin Bieber","Chuck Norris" & "Rihanna".

Every time the sketch loops it searches twitter for new tweets containing the above terms. I have represented the loop via the Arduino using LEDs to represent when each term is searched for.

[projectseven-blog]

This is a basic Processing app which searches and lists all the Tweets that have both the words 'bible' and 'lonely' in them. Some of the results are interesting. This is simply another step on from the last exercise, with the updated visual effect of showing the results in a looped fading list.

[projectseven-blog]

PHP and Processing

This is a screenshot of a tiny experiment that I did to test Processing's ability to handle PHP files. This would give me added flexibility in terms of moving information around the place because it allows me to store information on web page first, and then I can bring it into Processing.

[projectseven-blog]

Processing - Tweets with 'Jesus' and 'Bible' in them

This is a little app that I made this evening that searches and prints out all the different ways that the words Jesus and the Bible are quoted on Twitter. The colour of the words gets dull as the tweets 'go off'. This is just a small little test to see what the Twitter4j library can do and I got the bones of this code off of blog.blprnt.com.

The next step will be to ad an input to the feed somehow via the Arduino in order to prototype some sort of interactivity.

[projectseven-blog]

Progress with Processing

This video shows the Arduino and Processing being used together in order to provide a visual response to an analogue input (in this case, a pressure sensor which moves a ball onscreen). The ball on the screen will move from left to right depending on the amount of pressure applied to the sensor.

This is another small but important development as it gives me another building block to use in designing my final piece. As I work through these experiments I am getting ideas about how the user/viewer would interact etc.

[projectseven-blog]

Review of This Week's Progress

Here is a video showing the results of some of my work earlier this week. I have been focussing heavily on the tech review process as outlined in my project proposal. At this stage, I am exploring potential technologies in order to help me design and realize the final piece. In this video I am using a simple GUI in Processing to control an LED. This is simply a proof of concept which shows that Processing can be used to control the Arduino board. 

Processing is the just one of the alternative coding environments that can be used in conjunction with the Arduino. Another popular alternative is Flash.

[projectseven-blog]

Proxy Server

I am currently looking into proxy server software which allows me to run a local server on my own laptop. This would allow Arduino to communicate with another program. I initially thought of connecting with Flash but it turns out that Flash is probably not what I need given the route that I'm going down. Which leads me onto my next point...

My current idea is to provide a realtime visualization of the use of the bible on social networking sites i.e. every time a verse is quoted on Twitter or Facebook, a function in PHP or Processing will then process this info which would in turn be sent to Arduino which would visualize this information via its outputs (analogue lights maybe).

This is just is nice little concept and one that I am turning over in my mind all day. Paul suggested that I replicate it on a small scale and see what sort of practical limitations and implications it has as a concept.