Social Synapses + PicoBees
Wireless art installation at wellesley college
picobees toolkit (custom), logo language
Advisors: Robbie Berg and Franklyn Turbak
WOrk funded by the pamela daniels fellowship
For my senior thesis in computer science, I created a wireless networking toolkit for creating interactive projects. This toolkit, called "PicoBees", included a set of custom circuit boards that could communicate with each other wirelessly. Each board was equipped with a microcontroller, a motor driver, and an XBee wireless module. Building on work by the Scratch Team and Lifelong Kindergarten, the toolkit was designed to be used by beginners and non-programmers. I wanted anyone to be able to quickly make a fun project!
Users could program the boards with a blocks-based visual programming language, PicoBlocks (a variant of LOGO). By programming a single controller board ('the queen'), users were able to control any board in the kit!
Social Synapses is an art installation that used the PicoBees toolkit. See the images below for other PicoBees sample projects.
"Bubble wand" that wirelessly triggers multiple bubble machines when you blow into it
Circuit board for PicoBees toolkit
Interactive birthday present. Blowing out the candle triggered the release of balloons and played music.