Remote Observation

I've been investigating how to connect my Deep Listening Device to our given site of Point Douglas (6.7 miles or 10.7 kilometres from the University). I thought about different ways of communicating between sites including telephone and the Internet, but radio seemed to be the most accessible and feasible for this project. I looked into Citizen's Band (CB) radio since I knew it had a transmission range close to what I need. I borrowed a couple of old CB radios to start playing around with. I set up one radio in studio and could not hear any activity on any of the 40 CB channels. I suspect CB radio is still in use, but that it has been largely abandoned in favour of cell phones.

I'm working towards the creation of a device to be located in Point Douglas to watch the passing trains and transmit data about their motion to the [Deep|Remote] Listening Device which would translate the data into a strange music. I started prototyping a device using an Arduino board to read a photocell and transmit a signal over CB radio whenever there is an abrupt change in light that would indicate motion past the photocell. Most CB radios have a connector for an external microphone that contains all the basic control lines for the radio. I modified a cable taken from an old AT keyboard that happens to match the 5-pin DIN connector on the CB radio.


To transmit with the CB radio, the radio's TX line must be connected to the ground line, causing any signal applied to audio line to be transmitted. (This is the basic operation when using the CB radio's external microphone; pressing the button on the microphone causes any sound picked up by the microphone to be transmitted over the radio). I attached a 2N3904 transistor to one digital pin on the Arduino board to control the TX line. Tones are sent out from another digital pin on the Arduino.



This picture shows the Arduino connected to the portable CB radio. In the middle is the photocell (shielded by the blue straw) connected through the coil of green and black wire. This is the code I developed for the Arduino to send a sequence of two tones over the CB radio whenever there is a substantial change of light detected by the photocell:

Motion_Bleep.txt

You can hear the tones produced over the CB radio by clicking the following link:

Two_tone.mp3

Deep (Remote) Observation

Ted Krueger from the Rensselaer School of Architecture (RPI) visited our department to give a couple of lectures. He stopped by our studio to talk about our projects from last term and where they are headed this term. We talked about the Deep Listening Device and this site that I have been looking at in Point Douglas:



The site is located on city property next to the CPR rail lines and the rail bridge that crosses Higgins. There is a chainlink fence that prevents access to the rail lines. The rail line is elevated above the natural grade of the area, and there is a small hill that provides a decent view of the trains next to the fence. There are a few utility poles on the site. One pole has a large metal box containing a circuit breaker and an electricity meter housing (the meter itself is missing).



Our current studio project is to adapt our devices and/or technologies from last term so they can exist in Point Douglas. I have been thinking about creating a number of devices that would listen and watch for trains and perhaps create a music from that. The devices would be integrated into the existing "fabric" of Point Douglas, hidden in plain sight. A device could live on the chainlink fence, looking for changes in light to determine the rhythm of a passing train. Some other device could listen for changes in sound level and signal the approach of a train.



Ted suggested the possibility of transmitting data about the trains back to our studio, where my in-progress "Deep Listening" Device would translate the presence, motion and rhythm of the trains into a music (kind of a remote listening or observing). Ted wondered about how the trains communicate, which I had not even considered.

Raymond Scott's Electronium

I came across Raymond Scott's "Electronium" while browsing the Internet today. From http://emfinstitute.emf.org/exhibits/electronium.html:

"Developed by Raymond Scott in 1959, the Electronium was a large-scale composing machine. As Scott described it: "A composer 'asks' the Electronium to 'suggest' an idea, theme, or motive. To repeat it, but in a higher key, he pushes the appropriate button. Whatever the composer needs: faster, slower, a new rhythm design, a hold, a pause, a second theme, variation, an extension, elongation, diminution, counterpoint, a change of phrasing, an ornament, ad infinitum ...""

http://raymondscott.com/Electron.html
http://raymondscott.com/em.html


Scott harvested parts from the Electronium for use in other music-generating devices, so it is no longer operational. There is a YouTube video showing the device as it is today:

Pure Data + Arduino

I worked on some software for the Arduino microcontroller to control the solenoids of the Deep Listening Device. The code accepts "note" inputs from the Pure Data patch that will do the "deep listening." The Arduino code converts the note input to the proper signals to operate the solenoid attached to the desired accordion valve.

The code sends a 48-bit sequence out to the shift register circuit I built previously. Each bit controls a single solenoid, turning it on or off.

I used code snippets for the shift register from http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ShiftOut. The communication to Pure Data uses the Simple Message System library from http://tof.danslchamp.org/SimpleMessageSystem.

Here is the code:
Deep Listening Device Arduino Code

Here is a video of the startup sequence of the circuit. LED's are attached to each output for troubleshooting and show which solenoids are being activated.

My Head is Spinning

I built this Head BEAMbot a while back. It has two photocells (shaded with the blue straws) that sense light. The robot is mounted on top of a motor, and spins itself around to find a position where it can get equal amounts of light hitting each photocell. Devices such as this would be used as the "evil sensors," detecting light and motion for the "deep listening" device.

Here is a short clip of it in action: