Class project made it to school paper!
The analysing tactile map project I have been a part of made it to our school’s paper.
Opening Intuos 3 Classic Pen
I am currently part of a team project that is working on analyzing how visually impaired users use tactile maps. You can see our project progress at our assembla page. We are mainly interested in tracking fingers and one of the ways we can track finger movement is using a tablet.
We are using a Intuos 3 tablet to track fingers. We worked out that if we can strap the pen to a users finger we can track their movement across the tablet. We decided to get a extra pen and break open to see what we can work with. My friend Craig Gardner and I worked on the pen and the instructions below.
Instructions to open a Intuos 3 Classic Pen:
- The Classic pen has a thick plastic coating and we first thought of attacking the eraser part of the pen but then realized that even though the center part of the pen is thick, if you can remove the plastic enough then you can separate the pen cover into two and remove the circuit. (Warning: doing the steps in this instruction are destructive and will void the warranty of the pen).
Cut the pen across the center and pry open the plastic
- As you can see you need to cut the pen across the center with a sharp knife. When you do that you can pry open the plastic just enough to separate the bottom part and the top part of the plastic (Keep the plastic top and bottom for later). Once you do that you can remove the circuit, the pen tip side will be hindered by the plastic buttons but you can slowly wiggle it out.
Circuit of the Intuos 3 Classic pen
- We were hoping that the eraser circuit and the pen tip circuit were separated but as you can see it is one big circuit. You have to be careful when handling the circuit, they use coil wires for the eraser and the pen tip so you don’t want to break any of the wires as it would be really hard to fix it.
Eraser side
Pen tip side
- You can use the plastic cover to keep the circuit safe, the box that the pen came in works well to hold the pen stable stopping it from bouncing around.
Prototype Glove:
- Even though the circuit is one big peace, it is quite flat and easier to put on top of a users finger with a modified thin glove. I used one of my thin gloves, cutting the top of the index finger so that the tip can feel the surface. You can then use the cut top to hold the circuit on the top of the finger.
Circuit on top the finger using a thin glove.
- We decided the eraser tip is the better part to have over the finger. As the user moves their finger over the tablet we can scan where the eraser is.
Eraser tip over finger
- We did some preliminary tests with the glove and it did not feel uncomfortable and it did not restrict the finger.
Moving the finger over the tablet
Conclusion:
- We are happy with the outcome and we will be working next to making a permanent glove that can hold a circuit on a finger and that can also be moved to other fingers.
Oregon Cricket Club
It’s been now two years that I have coordinated the Cricket Club at the University of Oregon. I have been playing cricket for most of life and I think it is a great sport. I love to play and teach the game.
I made a base website for our team but I realized that once I leave it would be hard for the next person to continue updating the website so using my friend Jeremy’s awesome script I was able to install a wordpress blog that will manage the website, the same one that I use to run this blog.
You can check out the website @ Oregon Cricket Club.
I also made a twitter account that can be followed @ OCC Twitter.
Installing & working with git
I finally decided I needed to try git. I was able to setup up repositories with assembla and github. It was a challenge to get the .ssh keys setup correctly but it was a great learning exercise.
Here is a wiki page describing how one can setup git.
I have been able to work with the basic commands of git, but I still need to learn the full functionality of git. I found two good websites that are useful for someone who is using git for the first time:
FlickRibbon
This is a cakePhp open source project that I have been working on since the past few months. It is a application that allows flickr users to host contests in a structured manner. It started as a project in CIS 422 class at the University of Oregon and it started as Flickr Contestr. It was Jeremy Blanchard brainstorm and in the class he convinced our group to work on this and we joined the band wagon. Now the class is done and we want to continue on. We hope to create a robust engine to support many different forms of contests.
I am very excited about this project and I hope we can accomplish our goals.
You can follow our progress at code.FlickRibbon.
