ReedBox

View Press: Gizmodo, Make Magazine

The ReedBox is an device that that allows users to interface with simple software applications using magnets. The device itself is constructed using an array of reed switches each paired with an LED indicator. When a reed switch is exposed to a magnetic field, the two filaments inside the switch make contact, thus completing the circuit. When the magnetic field is removed, the filaments separate.

In the box, each switch is wired to a circuit that collects the state of each switch on the board. For this, I’m using a handful of 8-bit shift register IC chips. Once the values have been collected, they are sent to an Arduino microcontroller where the bytes get ready for their grand debut. You can get one of these microcontrollers on sparkfun for about $35.00. Finally, the Arduino microcontroller outputs batches of serial data to the serial port where they are picked up by the Processing sketch that is currently being executed.

Currently, I have developed five software applications for the ReedBox:

1. Particles: Users can place magnets on the ReedBox to manipulate the flow of particles on the screen. Each of the magnets activate specific attractor nodes. Once an attractor node has been activated, the surrounding particles begin to move towards the node. You can create multiple attractors and move them around to create graphical sketches.
   
2. Drum Sequencer: Users can create dynamic drum loops by placing magnets on drum nodes. Each horizontal row is mapped to a different drum sound. For instance, the dots on the first line will each trigger a snare drum. The second line will trigger bass drums. And so on… The moving line tells us where we are in the sequence. As you place magnets on the box, specific drum sounds are triggered allowing you to create any number of drum sequences.
   
3. Flickr Pickr: This is an application that allows users to choose various color combinations using magnets. When one or more colors have been chosen, the program displays an image that contains those colors. The backend uses a handful of PHP scripts that gather and analyze recent images posted to Flickr.
4. Music Box: Magnets trigger various notes in a scale and are repeated indefinitely until they are removed. Each of the tones were generated in GarageBand and later imported into Processing. The end results sounds like chimes.
5. Simple Game: The object of the game is to exterminate the enemy. Isn’t that the point of almost every game? The way that we do this is to create phaser beams that prevent the enemies from getting to the other side. Because god knows we don’t want the enemies to get to the other side. And like most other games, there are various types of enemies. Some are faster than others. Some require more hit points before they are destroyed. But here’s the challenging part: the more phaser beams that are activated, the weaker each phaser beam becomes. So, you just can’t flood the board with 50 phaser beams. You won’t win. The game also saves the highest score. The soundtrack for the game was created using GarageBand.

If you'd like to peek at the Processing source code: download it here (zip file: 37MB)