We thought we’d share some pictures from last Thursday, when Tellart popped over to Hasbro HQ in Pawtucket, RI to participate in their 2009 Inspiration Day.  This was a great afternoon of eating, meeting & greeting with folks from creative industries across New England, all set to the tune of some interesting live performances and speakers.  It is designed as a fun, science-fair-like event that lets Hasbro and others explore new technologies and inspire innovative thinking.

We were there displaying our delicious augmented reality cookies, AR memory game, a control-things-with-your-phone NADAmobile demo, and movies of the things that were too big (or too virtual) to bring in person.

Setting up the NADAmobile demo in our office ahead of time – all of these appliances are soon to become WiFi-enabled and iPhone-controlled.

Getting used appliances to match your brand can get messy.

The heart of it all: an Arduino Diecimila running NADAmobile.

A screenshot of the NADAmobile sketch we set up.  A simple push turns on the lamp.

And a nice shake turns the clock radio on and off.

My personal favorite – a quick burst of air aimed at the device’s microphone creates some wind onscreen and in real life (this one activates the fan).

How about creating some iPhone juice?  You can squeeze it as hard as you can, but in case that doesn’t work, there’s a backup – it activates the blender.  Not that we’re implying anything.

And in case all of that gets messy, we thought we’d allow attendees the chance to clean up by pretending the phone is a vacuum – thereby waking up our new fuchsia Dirt Devil.

Once we got to the fair, it was a challenge to configure our booth…

…and we ended up getting ourselves in trouble for pointing our fan at the huge card tower adjacent to us.  Whoops.

Our delicious AR cookie setup.

We had to provide a warning not to eat them (we don’t blame you, attendees).

The Augmented Reality memory game was a hit

Nick explains NADAmobile to interested attendees over the sound of the fan, vacuum, mixer, and radio.  Luckily the lamp was pretty quiet.

The day’s attendees came in all shapes and sizes.

And here are the videos we had playing in the background – check them out for more augmented reality, hacked appliances, and tech installation goodness!

Thanks to Hasbro for having us!  We had a great time and can’t wait to come back next year!

UPDATE: Get involved in the project and download the software from the Google Code project: http://code.google.com/p/nadamobile (sorry, for the moment it requires compiling some code)

1. Introduction (2008 Demo: 1 of 4)

Tellart’s 2008 Research and Development annual demonstrations. This Introductory chapter picks up where NADA (sketchtools.com) left off and takes Tellart’s sketching and prototyping tools into the mobile realm. This short video is a demo of Tellart’s RunSketch application working with Apple’s Dashcode on the iPhone and iPod Touch.

2. RunSketch (2008 Demo: 2 of 4)

This second of four chapters demonstrates how Tellart’s RunSketch application is integrated with Apple’s Dashcode to quickly and easily create applications that utilize all of an iPhone/iPod Touch’s functionality. Creating these applications is made extremely simple by RunSketch–requiring only Javascript to create sophisticated mobile applications and prototypes.

3. I/O Backpack (2008 Demo: 3 of 4)

This third chapter demonstrates the NADA Mobile hardware and software toolkit by Tellart. The hardware involves a custom designed circuit board that communicates to a computer via a wireless radio link. The board allows for both sensors (light, heat, motion, force, etc.) and actuators (lights, motors, etc.) to be integrated with the iPhone/iPod Touch’s hardware and software. The goal for Tellart in making NADA Mobile was not to extend the functionality of the iPhone as much as to create a sketching and prototyping platform that would empower designers to quickly and easily imagine and test new concepts for interactive products and services.

4. 1/8″ Jack (2008 Demo: 4 of 4)

This chapter demonstrates Tellart’s 1/8″ Jack (Eigth Inch Jack) software and hardware toolkit. 1/8″ Jack allows analog sensors to be connected to an iPhone or iPod Touch without the need for additional circuitry or power source. The system allows for fast and simple prototyping of new mobile concepts and requires only a basic understanding of Javascript to implement.

A sneak peek at the newest generation in the Sketchtools line…

*Update: Check out a full demo of NADA Mobile in this blog post or just skip right to the 1/8″ Jack demo.  You can also download the source code for the project at the NADA Mobile Google Code page.

Our favorite new iPhone hack, the duiPhone, will let you know for sure whether you should hand the car keys to a friend after a long night in the bar…

Once you blow into the mouthpiece, the application will determine your blood alcohol level – either telling you you’re good to go, or that you should consider calling a cab.

We built this from a store-bought-and-hacked breathalyzer attached to a 3G iPhone – our first experiment with Tellart’s newest Sketchtool: NADA Mobile.

Yes, this video was taken at our office. Yes, those are real 40s on the table.

No, Jasper was not allowed to drive home.
(no Tellart employees were harmed during the filming of this video.  Photos after the jump.)

[ed: Yes, the video shows an iPod Touch--which is a lot less expensive to test with than an iPhone--but the demo runs over WiFi and works on any device running iPhone OS]

Tellart teaches Physical Computing/Interaction Design workshops yearly at the Umeå Institute of Design in Sweden – in this particular two week long workshop, the students were asked to conceive of ideas that would encourage a more energetic “desk-job” experience. “Repetitive strain injury”, or RSI, is the name for a group of conditions common in computer workers and assembly line workers – carpal tunnel syndrome is a well known example. The conditions arise from too much time spent in a poor posture position or too much repetitive muscle activity.

The students, who came from a variety of different undergraduate backgrounds ranging from Computer Science to Psychology, were taught some basic physical computing concepts, and given an introduction to our Sketchtools platform.

Check out the Offsite section on tellart.com to see more videos of our workshops and courses…