Ear installation / Photos / Technical details
Trimphone from Lukas Vojir is live visual mixing/generating tool made from hacked old Trimphone.
Visual phone call into the world of Ears. Dialing numbers switches ear footage videos which are mixed
with live-feed coming from webcam and microphone mounted in the earphone.
All footage is 100% original.
Covered phone body with usb wire from Arduino
Opened phone with Arduino inside.
Earphone detail: besides microphone, there is a webcam installed instead of a reproductor.
The rotary dialer circuit and Arduino code are pretty simple. Dialer works on principle of interrupting current: dial 7 and current
is interrupted 7 times - this is counted in Arduino and the number is sent via serial to whatever application listens.
Webcam is connected via USB and microphone through standart mic jack.
For Ear "installation" flash AS3 is used because of stability issues with other video packages. First I tried to use some opensource
solution like VVVV or Processing - but they are both not very good in dealing with multiple video files, especially not when they
are 800x600 big and 20 seconds long - during development I faced crashes or non minor delays when trying to switch
between footage so I finally decided for AS3. However the mixing capabilities in AS3 are not great, when mixing with desaturated
webcam feed
the fps could be pretty bad.
So number is dialed, arduino counts interruptions and sends it via serial, then I use Serproxy and a piece of code called flashduino to send
this into flash. In AS3 I handle webcam and microphone. To desaturate webcam feed I used the code from Grant Skinner.