Sunday, November 02, 2008
Spicey Interaction
During the second week of the Physical Computing course, we were given the brief to create a project that took an old or familiar object and re-imagined it in a new way. Using what we’d learned about electronics and the Arduino platform we explored what was possible.
After a lot of brainstorming, we eventually decided to create a project that explored the idea of taste, spontaneity and spices. We created a working prototype of spice rack that would track what spices you used during cooking and would send the info to your TV, which would then suggest a movie based on the type of food you used. If you use a lot of salt you’ll get a gritty, realistic film, whereas if you use a lot of cocoa or another sweet ingredient, you’ll get a nice happy animation. Lots of oregano, then maybe you’ll get a saucy italian movie. The real fun happens when you mix & match the different spices with interesting results.
You can see the spice rack, and behind it the movie it has suggested. In this case, it’s Pretty Woman. 
Eline demoing the spice rack.
Lights below the spice rack, change lighting depending on which spices are used.
They’re halogen lights controlled via the Arduino DMX shield add-on.