The exhibition

They day of the exhibition was here! We did some last minute fine-tuning and checked that it all worked and went to prepare our table at the exhibition. Aside from over-heating batteries everything went fine and people seemed to enjoy and find the prototype and concept as interesting! We were quite happy!

Upper left: The prototype. Upper middle: Shachi and Johanna wearing the bracelets. Upper right: Our table. Below: Trying the communication out with visitors!

//Love and Johanna

The video

In this video we introduce our main concept, which is that of promoting interaction in public spaces. We see a sad person with one of our beautiful bracelets equipped with stunning LED-technology (Neopixel Ring) that displays that he has not been hugged enough today. A person who is more happy, spots this person and moves in to hug. When the hug is complete both receive "Happy Points" from the action and they are now both happy!

Created by Johanna Andersson, Love Larsson, Shachi Bista and Bálint Zsiga.

The final solution

In our final solution we used one phone to communicate with the rFleas through ANT+ protocol, without using a server. That's maybe not the best solution if we want to develop the concept further and let more players participate in the game, but that was the easiest solution with the resources that were available for us.

While there is no interaction between two participants, happiness level is indicated on the Neopixel rings. In every minute (it was 1 minute for the demo, but can be different interval), the reFleas are getting notifications from the phone to decrease the happiness level. Heart beat like blinking of the last LED indicates that there is connection between the phone and the rFleas.

During interaction the touching participant's RFID reader reads the tags on the other's back. A rainbow cycle animation starts on it's Neopixel ring, indicating that something good is happening. The rFlea sends a notification to the phone about the interaction, which forwards it to the other participant's rFlea, which starts the rainbow cycle animation on the Neopixel ring as well.

During a hug, different amount of happy points are gained by both of the participants, according to the duration of the interaction. The giving participant always gets half of the amount of points as the receiving, since we thought these hugs are intended to make the receiving participant happy but making a people happier causes happiness for the giving participant as well.

After the interaction the Neopixel rings are showing the new level of happiness.

Help can be found for the ID-12 RFID readers here. 

Source code

Last minute challenges

After soldering all the equipments, it turned out that the delays in the operation of our device are caused by power consumption problems. Because of this reason we had to regulate the Neopixel ring's power consumption. As we recognised this problem quite late (little before the demo), the easiest solution was to set its brightness lower. A better solution could have been to supply energy for the Neopixel ring directly from the battery. In this way we could have kept its brightness, but it would have required more soldering which we didn't have time for.

Another fast change what we had to make was the relocation of the RFID reader from the finger to the inner side of the wrist, because of the reasons which were mentioned in a previous post. As a result of this the concept has also changed. From now on the interaction was only limited to hugs, rather than allowing every kind of touch.

The last challenge was to find out where to place the RFID tags to sense the different hugs. For this we conducted a fast 'research'. We asked around 15 people to give a hug to Shachi and we signed the wrist positions on his back. It was really interesting as we got really different result than what we expected. So we had to relocate the already placed RFID tags :)

Video about some of the participants of our hug 'research':

Last days until the exhibition: Putting the prototype together

During the last days we made the bracelet for the wrist and incorporated the rFlea and battery in the design by using handicraft and soldering. We sewed small pockets for both and fastened them with velcro on the back of the bracelet.

Left: rFlea that is connected to the battery and the NeoPixel ring. Middle: Gluing the velcro on the leather bracelet. Right: Bracelet and the two rings (in blue leather for bracelet A and B) with the leather bands for hiding the wires.

 
It is worthwhile to mention that we made two bracelets with corresponding tech (bracelet A and bracelet B) since we wanted to show the communication and interaction in the game to a full extent. Sadly, the RFID-reader on bracelet B stopped working before the exhibition, leaving us with only bracelet A that could read the RFID-tags placed on the other participant. The cellphone still worked though and could send the data a reading from the RFID-reader on bracelet A gave to both bracelets and displaying the corresponding Happy Points on each NeoPixel ring. 

As stated before we wanted to connect the rFlea on the bracelet with the RFID-reader on the ring to make it all work. We hid the wires with leather bands going from the bracelet up to the ring on the finger and the NeoPixel ring, that would show the amount of Happy Points gained, was placed on the bracelet instead of the ring. By placing the NeoPixel ring on the bracelet it was easier to carry for the user than if having it on the ring.

Left: The intented design of the bracelet and leather band hiding the wires connecting the rFlea and RFID-reader. Right: Incorporating the tech, rFlea and NeoPixel ring on bracelet and RFID-reader in red.  

During the last days before the exhibition when we tried everything together we found a problem, we had previously tested and noticed that the RFID-reader could read the tag even if we had our hand inbetween them but now it couldn't read through the leather in the ring. We revised the design and placed the RFID-reader on the back of the bracelet making our bracelet/ring-jewellery into a simple bracelet. It both looked better and worked fine now. The prototype was ready for the exhibition!

Getting closer

So after failing with quite some options how we could implement the communication between the two rfleas, we finally found a working one. We had a lot of ideas in mind, eg. doing it with spacebrew or just with a stand-alone server. But usually faced problems, what we could not work around. This last one which led us to the final solution was that we still didn't have 2 phones, but the deadline is getting closer and closer. So we went with a solution where we only use one phone which communicates with the 2 rfleas.

At the moment the communication works. We have even put together another RFID reader with the second rflea. Unfortunately we are still having some problems with delays in the communication. We think one reason could be the bad connections on the breadboard. To make it work we always has to squeeze the cables to the reflea with our hands. At this point we think we can't really work further without soldering the cables on the rflea, as the bad connection is causing so many errors that we don't really know anymore if the problem is in our code or it's just the bad connection.

Shachi & Balint

Thinking about the design

We were thinking about the design a little bit and felt that if we were going to put the NeoPixel ring and RFID reader on the finger, there would be a lot of wires protruding the wooden box which would look a bit strange (Also, there was a problem of how we were going to solder them altogether). So in order to solve it, we thought maybe we could create a ring-bracelet hybrid. For inspiration, we took "Greek-styled" slippers (I don't really know if that's what it is called).

Possibly made of leather as well, the wires can then be made with conductive threads, which themselves can be embroidered as a design and will be much more flexible than copper wires. 

They can also be inside the leather bracelet hidden from view.

We were thinking of placing the RFID reader on the finger and the rflea and battery on the wrist along with the NeoPixel ring (hidden under the wrist bracelet below).

Creating the ring and casing for the tech

Today we've been working on designing the prototype-ring/casing, ideas were discussed on whether the NeoPixel ring should be placed on the RFID reader-ring or if it should be placed separately on a patch. Since the wiring would be too long if it where on a patch we settled on the prior option.

We've been measuring, sawing.. you name it! Now we have sketches on how it all should be placed as well as most of the parts for the RFID reader-casing (to put on the ring).

 

Placement of the tech

In the sketch the RFID tags are placed along the shoulder/arm of the player. We want to make all the communication work and once we're sure it will work with the motion of a pat on the shoulder/arm we can add more RFID tags for other motions (such as a hug etc).

What is sure is that each placement of a tag should be chosen depending on which interactive motions we select. To make the Happy Points work the RFID reader (placed on the ring) much be close to the tag which is why it is good think of potential motions before placing the tags.

//Johanna & Love

We have contact!

I am happy to announce that after many painstaking attempts, we have finally got a phone to connect to the jewelry through ANT+ communication protocol. We've previously had trouble with the server going down, incompatible driver versions and incompatible application versions that always got in our way.

Today we used Jordi's updated code for the arduino library to communicate with other devices through ANT+, updated the driver on the phone to the latest version, used the updated Android application for newer phones and installed a standalone server that we can put up and down at will. We could get the RFID tag reader to read a tag and send a signal when it is reading something.

We were also discussing whether we would need a server at all, since the operations on the "happy points" is pretty atomic, perhaps we only need to write some javascript code that runs inside an Android WebView. This would greatly simplify the technology, but is open to discussion.

There was some confusion about the concept of the game, but I think it's all cleared up ... I hope?

The Happy Points Game

The game

Our intention with this project is to spread happiness. How can we motivate people to be more interactive and social? Well, a game is a good idea! We want people to spread happiness by giving each other attention and social interaction in the form of a handshake, a pat, a hug, a high-five... you name it!

Basically each player has a:

• Patch/band on their shoulders (this is were the RFID tags are placed). 
• Ring with the RFID reader.
• Display of the Happy Points (HP).
• The Display could be implemented as part of the patch.
• ...or part of the ring.
• ...or part of a necklace. 

The different parts of technology used for the interaction.

 
For this project we have settled on implementing the motion of a pat on the shoulder to send Happy Points to the player.

• If you notice someone with a low happy-meter you can go to the person and start interacting with (give a comforting pat on the shoulder) her/him and in that way spread happiness.
• By making people happy you also get happy! This is why both the player getting the pat and the player giving the pat will each get a Happy Point (resulting in one LED lighting up).
• The happier you get or make people the fuller the NeoPixel ring will be (all the LEDs will light up if you have 100% Happy Points).   

 

To do

• Plan and make the design of the patch:
• Where should the RFID tags be in it?
• Which material should we use for it?
• Conductive thread to connect the NeoPixel ring to the other tech?
• Leather/other fabric for the patch.
• Should we, during the exhibition, fasten the patch with a band or sewing it on a shirt?
   
•  Plan and make the ring for the RFID reader.
• Wood?
• Other materials

Decisions up until now

Technology

We have settled on using:

• RFID-tags and readers to sense the interaction.
• rFlea and cellphones to connect and send info (so the recipient also gets Happy Points).
• NeoPixel ring to visualize the Happy Points.

 

Shape

The NeoPixel ring will be used as a jewellery-piece either:

• On a ring (Together with the RFID-reader)
  or...
• As a necklace (Separated from the RFID-reader which is on the ring) 

The RFID-tags will be implemented in a patch that we put on the shoulder of each "gamer".

 

The interaction

 

• We have defined the interaction to be based on touch, preferably a comforting stroke.
• When one of the users touch another user (thus reading the RFID-tag) both the users get happy (naturally) and receive "Happy Points!" :)
  
  More specifically...

• The interaction and interactive motion is limited (in this project and time frame) to patting the other person on the shoulder.
• On the shoulder is the RFID tag
• When patting and wearing the ring the RFID-reader can still read the tag.
  
  
  //Johanna & Love