http://tom.stoopdice.com/lamp is now properly online and functional with its own dynamic domain and everything. Please visit, and didle the button.

Have a good time but try not to fuse my lights.

Heres the concept, i wanted to make a lamp in the corner of my bedroom that can be turned on and off by anyone over the internet.

Imagine im like in bed in the middle of the night, and some Korean dude on the other side of the world is on my website, constantly flicking my lamp on and off or something…

So again, i used an arduino. The ethernet shield means that i can run a webserver off my arduino without  it needing to be connected to anything other than my router by an ethernet cable and a 9V battery/wall adapter. I dont need to leave my computer running on overnight or anything like that. Also this unit is small enough to eventually fit inside the lamp base.

I also used a hefty relay for the lamp/mains, and a not-so-hefty relay to switch that, and of course; a lamp. Altogether looking something like this;

The breadboard isnt actually being used, so you can see how small the whole unit could feasibly be. The white cable is running to the router in the other room.

So the server on the arduino is was currently located at http:// 86.25.254.241 / but maybe ill get a real domain name for it in the not too distant future (http://tom.stoopdice.com/lamp)

So when the server is online, which when ive sorted my room out will hopefully be 24/7, it looks something like this;

Kinda hard to prove that this works other than a video of a lamp flicking on and off, so;

The sound is really out of sync so the clicks come ages after the lamp turns on.

I guess this is what happens when i decide not to go out on a friday nite am i rite?

Goddamn this is awesome

So today i finished it off & put it in some nice boxes.. its pretty much ready to rock

The boxes and the LDR/sensor (on the right). The whole thing kinda reminds me of this

The brains.

No photo of the camera in box as the camera i was using ran out of batteries.. but it looks like a camera inside a box.

Having to resort to using the arduino is a massive shame though as it really is a waste of resources and also i feel a bit shit about leaving a £12 board as well as the £5 camera outside in the street…oh well, anyone got a stepladder i can borrow?

So i got really bored of trying to EE a solution to this problem without having an oscilloscope or any of the right parts in the studio i resorted to just using an arduino and some really simple code…

Breadboardin’

Veroboardin’ (I LOVE shields!)

I’m going to blog my two tutorials this week from the dynamic duo of Matt and Luara. Matts tutorial on Monday put me in a good mood as he said he liked my drawing about the projectors and sequential which mixed my trianspotting interview with my conveyor belts. It sprung me into looking for more collectors to talk to to help ground my project. But he also saw the potential in doing perhaps a series of outcomes (something i’m well into) which could be an illustration (loosely, I’m not going to get too prescriptive about it) of the collection process, i.e. acquisition, display and storage, or something like that.

My tutorial with Laura went really well. She talked about my process, and the transitions between drawing/idea and model/physical and from that to outcome/presentation. She said that I might not need to create the things I’m drawing if the outcome wasnt actually a set of conveyor shelves (for example). I could present the outcome and design the process, which is kind of a lot of what my work is about anyway. Laura said I’ve really got to figure out what the point of whatever it was i was going to design was, even if it just so that I can display/ present it in the right way.

I’m now going to print out all the interviews, good drawings and good models and start to merge them slightly into groups to design around. I’ve also got some more focused making and stuff towards a finished ‘thing’. I guess it’s also encouraging that Luara was asking me what kind of outcome it was that I wanted to produce (a video, an object, graphics), and it made me happy to think that i didn’t care; whatever is relevant to the project. I like that I might actually be this Goldsmiths designer and that I use only graphics as a convinient tool.

A write up of stuff heard at Stampex (see previous post),

I once had a customer, he’s dead now, but we went to auctions together. Henry was a millionaire, and I would spend three grand on the business and he would spend thirty on his personal collection, & I asked him what was the best bit for him? Was it finding the right stamp at the right price, or just the right stamp, or putting it in the album or looking at it. He said the best bit was crossing it of his list.

Animals? Birds? Eagles? Bald Eagles? Do you have any?

Collecting is an opiate, it charms and gets in your blood & you’re finished.

The stranger things are more interesting, when compared to the rarer stamps. All you can say about them is, well they’re rare. At least the stranger ones are interesting.

Many wise people collect the envelopes- single stamps are intrinsically worthless bits of paper, but the envelope gives the use and history of the stamp.

It’s in your hand one moment and then you don’t know where then into the person you sent it to.

It’s all National Trust bags, F1 T-shirts, Insignias, Beards & Boxes (me).

I went to the Business Design Centre for Stampex, the British National Stamp Exhibition. So many stamps. So many old men. Didn’t manage to get quite the interview material I had hoped for but once I’d decided to treat it as an observation thing and as research it was great. The catagorisation of stuff was mental. A map led to a stand which declared itself as ’specialist in Maritime Stamps and Postal History’ and then this had a catalogue which referred you to a box or album, which was split into price, or country, or date, or whatever and then the stamp was presented often with it’s own label underneath it within these. The tools element was also present: tweezers, magnifying tools, and shoulder bags for albums. The stamp with the tiger on it shown here I like, as it shows how the collector gets these special contexts which the regular user or reciever wouldn’t.

A really beautiful animation about a couple of funeral directors. Check it out at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00htlr4/b00htlqw/This_Way_Up/