Bruno Kruse

Bruno Kruse is an interaction designer and developer. His recent artwork focuses on developing tools to create interactive installations. He utilizes technology to create meaningful experiences and is motivated by an ongoing curiosity of designing with code.

Presenting with Carrie Kengle

Workshop: How Was Your Day, an Ambient Network

"How Was Your Day" is an experimental social network that enables you to communicate via color and light.

Light patterns and color as forms communication has been explored throughout history. Examples include signal lamps, morse code, smoke signals and smartphone notifications. Can we develop our own ambient language using only patterns, light and color?

Together in this workshop we are looking to push the these concepts further with our favorite modern-day web technologies. We will be designing a peer-to-peer communication network using software and hardware tools including Raspberry Pi, MeteorJS, MQTT, LED Strips and breakout boards.

In the first half of the workshop we will learn about basic setup, networking and communication with Raspberry Pi. In the second half we'll build out the hardware component of the project to display our network data via light. Our breakout board kit is designed to be a simple way to connect LED strips to the RaspberryPi GPIO.

Workshop Agenda

Setting up the RPi
Installing our social network templates. NodeJS + MQTT
Break
Hardware jam and building

Prerequisites

Basic programming knowledge recommended. (JavaScript)

Materials

Bring $60 cash to purchase at the workshop, or bring your own:

Raspberry Pi Model B+
USB WiFi dongle (802.11b/g/n)
8GB Card w/ Raspbian Wheezy
5V 2A MicroUSB power cable

We will also provide each attendee with these additional items:

Custom hardware
LED Strip
5V power supply for the LEDs

Each participant should have a laptop with a text editor and an SSH client installed.