For the past ten weeks, Kinoma has had the pleasure of working with Kids’ Vision every Wednesday. Kids’ Vision is an afterschool program for girls ages 8-12 to further their knowledge of the wonders of engineering and coding. The Kids’ Vision mission is to empower 3rd to 6th grade girls by increasing their interest and knowledge of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art+Design, and Math). Kids’ Vision previously conducted a program with Tesla Motors, where the girls applied the math they are taught in school.

What was Kinoma’s program for Kid’s Vision?

With Kinoma, the girls learned how to think like programmers. They learned coding concepts, were introduced to visual programming, conducted a hardware teardown, and even soldered! They even wrote apps for Kinoma Create by following our KinomaJS Blocks tutorials, our KinomaJS integration of Google’s Blockly.

Educators: Kinoma Curriculum

Want to know the specific lesson plans? Check out the curriculum we used; educators can use this plan to teach kids about hardware, software, and design.

The girls were so much fun to work with, and it was a great experience for the Kinoma team to guide them through prototype development. By the conclusion of the program, they were coding and wiring up hardware with familiarity and ease.

Stay tuned

Stay tuned for a more in-depth blog post on our time with Kids’ Vision!

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Thinking beyond the companion app

Today I want to talk a little bit about interaction design and how it relates to IoT.

Smartphones have afforded us new opportunities to design useful and exciting products, and they have given us new ways to interact with information. We can push and pinch, swipe and drag, peek and press. This has proven useful when developing IoT devices that rely on companion apps to be initiated, managed, and updated. For this reason, Kinoma Studio is able to package iOS and Android apps from the same code scripted for the connected device. 

But has smartphone-centric interaction design become somewhat limiting? We have confined the internet to screens at the expense of exploring how we could integrate the internet in the world around us. But is this a bad thing? The internet is really just information that we can express in any way we want. When starting out on my first project as a Kinoma Maker in Residence, I began asking myself if there was an enhanced way for IoT products to communicate directly with us, in addition to—or instead of—employing companion apps. Kinoma’s prototyping platform enabled me to explore all these possibilities.

Nature as IoT inspiration

A lot of the class work I did at Stanford University was an exploration of how our smartphones are starting to engulf our limited cognitive resources. Every time we get a notification, alert, or alarm, our focus is taken away from what we’re doing. As more information becomes useful and available, it will become increasingly important to find inventive and unobtrusive ways to express this information.

In the natural world, objects have a very good way of communicating information. When your avocados are ripe, you don’t get an iPhone notification; the avocado tells you itself in how it smells and how it feels. When the weather turns and it’s about to rain, clouds gather. As autumn approaches, the leaves change color.  When your plant needs to be watered, it visibly begins to droop.

While these things seem very ordinary to us, in essence they’re communications of information. There’s no reason that hardware shouldn’t communicate information every bit as elegantly.

Elegant communication with IoT devices

The “drop: Smart Umbrella” is an early foray into this idea. It’s not particularly complicated. It’s designed to live at the periphery of the focus of the user. When an umbrella is needed later in the day, it begins to glow. If the user shakes it, it will stop its glow and therefore stop intruding on the her/his focus. If no rain is forecast, the umbrella will stay silent — it has nothing to say.

It’s not a revolutionary product, and it’s not for sale. But it does demonstrate how to think outside the confines of our smart phones in order to achieve a more natural way to express information. Objects can communicate information when they’re required to, and fade away when they’re not.

Applying this thinking to the world around you

Imagine this design approach as applied to objects around you:

• Instead of a Fitbit notification letting you know you haven’t exercised in a while, your running shoes gain your attention by vibrating as if restless to be worn on a run.
• In addition to your bank’s smartphone app sending an alert when your credit card has been maxed out for the day’s spending limit, that credit card itself displays an “X” so you don’t mistakenly hand it to the next cashier.
• As you’re getting ready to leave, your car keys become warm to the touch when traffic on your route is particularly bad, suggesting you should look into an alternative.
• On lazy days, your remote powers down according to a television limit you’ve set for yourself, making it difficult to watch shows after too many hours on the couch.

As IoT products become increasingly prevalent where we live and work, developers can distinguish their products with inventive and unobtrusive ways to express information. There’s a wealth of potential for IoT products to learn from examples in nature, and communicate directly with us, in addition to (or instead of) through companion apps.

Alistair comes to us from Stanford University, where he studies Product Design Engineering and Computer Science. He has experience with product design, business, and consumer outreach.

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Today, the Kinoma team has completed the move to JavaScript 6th Edition by delivering a firmware update to Kinoma Create and a new version of Kinoma Studio. Both use Kinoma’s XS6 JavaScript engine, an independent implementation optimized for embedding JavaScript in hardware products and applications. XS6 remains the most thorough implementation based on the Kangax compatibility tests, implementing 96% of the new language features.

Using new language features in KinomaJS apps

Our main motivation in investing to update to JavaScript 6th Edition ahead of the rest of the industry is our belief that the improvements in the language make it better for building products. Developers working in 6th Edition will develop more robust products more quickly. In my Language Matters blog post, I wrote about our enthusiasm for new features that include true modules, more compact syntax, traditional classes, promises, generators, and symbols.

In this first official release of JavaScript 6th Edition support, we have begun to update our KinomaJS application framework to take advantage of some of these new features. In his blog post “Using JavaScript 6th Edition Features in KinomaJS,” our software architect Patrick Soquet introduces how to use these new capabilities of KinomaJS in your applications.

We are just getting started adding support for JavaScript 6th Edition features in KinomaJS. We’d like to hear your ideas for making KinomaJS even easier to use by building on new language features. We’re available to discuss them on the Kinoma Forum’s Coding area.

In the App Store now

Application developer Sébastien Burel of Haruni has been working with the Kinoma team to update the iOS version of his Frigo Magic app to use XS6 and our KinomaJS implementation with JavaScript 6th Edition support. That version of Frigo Magic is in the App store today, quite possibly making it the first app built on JavaScript 6th Edition (no polyfills and no transpiler needed). Congratulations to Sébastian for leading the way in using KinomaJS for mobile app development.

“Using KinomaJS and XS6 has allowed Haruni to deliver the first ES6 iOS application without a transpiler, giving us an advantage over the competition. The transition was really easy because the language changes are backwards compatible. We took the opportunity to rewrite our code using ES6 features to be even more clear, modular, and reliable. We are using a lot of the new features including class, arrow function, promise, and many syntax. A big ‘Thank You!’ to the Kinoma team for the great work and support.”

– Sébastien Burel of Haruni

Performance

XS6 is considerably faster than XS, our JavaScript 5th Edition engine. In our own benchmarks, the overall performance is nearly doubled for key operations. Of course, benchmarks cannot represent all code in the real world. If you notice performance differences in your apps—much better or much worse—please let us know.

Open source

Today we have also updated our open source repository with the latest version of XS6, the same version built into Kinoma Create and Kinoma Studio.

Compatibility

Our primary goal in this release of Kinoma Create and Kinoma Studio has been to provide a stable foundation for working in JavaScript 6th Edition. Bringing up a new implementation of a new version of the language while maintaining compatibility with existing code has taken the summer. We didn’t try to achieve 100% backwards compatibility in situations where backwards compatibility would have introduced overhead and complexity in XS6. We prioritized maintaining the high performance and low memory usage of XS6 for the long term.

Once you upgrade, be prepared to spend a little bit of time verifying that your projects are working as expected. In our experience, there are not many issues, and many of them throw an exception, which makes them straightforward to track down. We’ve updated all of our sample code (over 100 samples now!) in our GitHub repository to be compatible with JavaScript 6th Edition.

In updating our apps and samples to use XS6, the majority of problems fall into two groups. First, because modules in XS6 use strict mode by default, implicit references to global variable generate an exception. Second, XS6 modules no longer share the global variable scope with the application that loads them using require.

Get started

For a couple years now, JavaScript programmers have been buzzing with excitement about the new features coming in JavaScript 6th Edition. It is here today, ready for use in IoT products, your own projects, and mobile apps. We’ve delivered product-ready code, not an experiment. You can start developing today using Kinoma Create or the desktop simulators built into Kinoma Studio. The Kinoma team has worked very hard on Javascript 6th Edition this year to keep developers on the leading edge of adopting and deploying this new technology.

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Team Kinoma flew across the country for two great events: the New York IoT Central Meetup and Maker Faire New York.

Meetup: developing with IoT platforms

IoT Central, a meetup based in Manhattan, invited Kinoma and MediaTek Labs to present development platforms for the Internet of Things. Peter Hoddie discussed the importance of bringing the maker manifesto and open source to IoT. He also made the case for adopting Kinoma technology when prototyping IoT products by highlighting its key benefits, including the ability to script for hardware, and the path from product idea to mass production on the same chipset.

Kinoma’s first meetup in New York certainly gave a warm welcome, with a very engaged audience, a ton of great questions, and true NY pizza pie. Thank you to Mitchell Golner for arranging the event, and for being a gracious host to those of us from Silicon Valley.

Maker Faire New York: robots, visual programming, and gamification

The majority of our weekend was spent in Queens, in the Maker Pavilion of World Maker Faire New York. We had a blast! We were excited to show new demos that illustrate what’s possible with JavaScript for connected devices, implementation of emerging protocols such as CoAP, integration with cloud services, and an experiment in visual programming that makes it all even more accessible than ever before to the new maker.

Crowd pleasers

Engaging demos is what it’s all about at MFNY, and we brought some popular attractions:

• Tank Bot gave MFNY attendees the chance to drive a robot with motors and controllers powered by Kinoma Create. Kinoma’s Makers in Residence built a mini tank and controllers using two Kinoma Create devices that communicate over CoAP. Rotate potentiometers effect the voltage outputted, and the changes in voltage are translated to varying speeds and direction of the robot. A Kinoma Create is used to interpret varying voltage values and send motor commands to another Kinoma Create hooked up to a mini tank. We covered a lot of ground — figuratively and literally — with Tank Bot.

• Blockly is a client-side JavaScript library for building visual programming editors, first introduced by Google at a Maker Faire in 2012. We are testing an implementation of Blockly for KinomaJS, for developers to script KinomaJS apps for Kinoma hardware in a visual way. While this is still exploratory, we couldn’t resist bringing it to MFNY. We’re experimenting with how developers can create apps for their Kinoma hardware with blocks, and then see the code it generates as a way to learn how to program with KinomaJS. We’re also testing how it could speed up scripting for Kinoma hardware.

• Fingerprint Lock integrates a TTL fingerprint scanner with a 5v solenoid to prototype a home security system. The project—very popular with MFNY attendees of all ages—registers and stores authorized fingerprints on the scanner. Authorized fingerprints can then unlock the door controlled by the solenoid. The prototype was first demonstrated at Maker Faire Bay Area 2015 and shows how to control the fingerprint scanner via a serial BLL and the solenoid using a digital output. The prototype also shows how to integrate the Kinoma Create full screen keyboard, play sounds, build scrolling lists and display rotated graphics.

• Monster Match builds on top of the I2C-NFC sample by using the same Adafruit PN532 NFC/RFID Controller shield to create an interactive game that makes use of the NFC cards as a “controller.” The player places a card on the reader and is able to select an avatar (a friendly monster!) from more than a dozen options. The program takes advantage of the fact that data can also be written to an NFC card and uses it as a storage medium: the player’s choice is effectively serialized onto the card as JSON data, and the card can now be brought to another Kinoma Create where the companion project is running to proceed with gameplay. The visualizations of wins or losses are connected to a TV via a Mac Mini and WebSockets.

• wot.io, out of Manhattan, was a guest in Kinoma’s Maker Faire New York booth. They introduced Ship IoT, a solution for enterprise and industrial customers, enabling IoT solutions to be quickly built based on a core set of data services. To demonstrate the power of Kinoma Create combined with cloud services, they used a temperature sensor suitable for giving a very precise reading on our favorite beverage—coffee! As described in their blog post about the event, data from the temperature sensor was captured by an attached Kinoma Create device, sent through PubNub, and routed to wot.io data services bip.io, scriptr.io, and Circonus.

Another bite

The Kinoma team was thrilled to have opportunity to bring our IoT prototyping platform to NYC. Thank you everyone at the IoT Central meetup and at Maker Faire New York for the warm welcome. We look forward to returning, and taking another bite out of the Big Apple.

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Kinoma team members created a gumball machine that served as the platform for Monster Match, a game showing the capabilities of two Kinoma Creates talking to each other. However, this gumball machine lacked an effective dispensing mechanism, and a bit of character. The Makers in Residence took on the challenge of reimagining the gumball machine to give it a unique identity. Thus, the brainstorming began.

We knew how to make it work…

We set out to improve the dispensing mechanism, and to make it more sturdy so it could be more easily transported to events.  The dispensing mechanism was a rotating disk with a hole the size and depth of a single gumball, designed to select one at a time and drop it into the dispensing chute with the help of a servo. Initial sketches for improvement involved a metal base with a thicker wall of acrylic tubing on top. Simple enough, but not good enough.

…but we knew we could make it better.

Additional ideas batted around to really make this game engaging:

• Build a Plinko-style dispenser.
• Build upon the metal, cylindrical idea with a second, outer acrylic tube that houses an individually-addressable LED string that could illuminate to add eye-catching personality to the dispenser.
• Make a simple reaction game, where a single light would race around the string of lights and the user would try to stop the speeding light with the press of a button to halt it within a certain zone, similar to a fairly popular arcade game.
• Build a rectangular array of vertical gumball chutes, each designated a particular color. Turn the gumball machine into an infographic to show the popularity of a variety of different topics (for example, each column could be designated a presidential candidate, and a gumball would dispense when a Twitter hashtag is used related to that candidate). However, this infographic form factor seemed impractical for a machine dispensing an item the user would eat – there would be very little user control.

The ideas kept coming until I finally decided to continue the “arcade game” theme. Having always been a fan of Skeeball, I wanted to make a Skeeball-like game that dispenses a gumball if you hit a certain target.

The first idea was to create a ramp. The player would shoot a ball using a pinball plunger into a horizontal playing field with holes through they could “win” and claim their gumball. I mocked up this idea in CAD and had a fully 3D-printable, handheld version of this game created in two days. It used a small, spherical magnet as its “gumball”, and would return the ball if you failed to get it inside one of the three holes. If you successfully launched the ball into the hole, your prize was dispensed through a series of chutes under the playing field. This small mockup was an interesting tool to see what kind of games might be intriguing to play and how they might look. However, I was still unsure how the ball would actually be dispensed into the playing field.

Simple is always best

Eventually, I wondered why we weren’t just building a Skeeball game? What happens if we just shrank the size of a skeeball court into gumball sized dimensions? So, we used a CAD program to model this scaled version so we could 3D print it. Since the max dimensions of the 3D printer we had were 6” x 6” x 6”, and the part was nearly 10” x 14”, the part had to be broken into six 3D-printed parts. After a day of printing, I glued the skeeball mockup on top of a sheet of cardboard for support, and cut holes in the cardboard to match the playing field.

Next, a system of tubes was needed to return the gumball once a point had been scored. Originally, we planned to use PVC tubes, but the joints were too large to connect all the holes together. So, we designed a special system of tubes using CAD software to successfully return the ball. This system was designed with holes in each tube so that a small IR light transmitter and receiver could be installed to figure out which point value had been scored. We hot glued these tubes onto the back of the game board, and created a ramp out of cardboard to finish the basic gameplay prototype.

The prototype provided us with the angles of the backboard and ramp to mimic the actual Skeeball game, and the appropriate sizing necessary for easy transportation. The tubing allowed for testing of the sensors to establish how precise they were and how quickly they could recognize a hit.

Addressing challenges

1. A big challenge was figuring out how the player would shoot the gumball. It would be unsanitary for them to handle a gumball, and a pinball plunger might not have enough power to shoot a gumball into the playing field. So we quickly designed a customized launcher using CAD software and 3D printed parts. We only needed four screws and nuts, and a thick rubber band. This provided plenty of power that could easily be added or removed with more or less rubber bands.

2. Another challenge was figuring out how the gumball would be dispensed. The original idea was to have all the gumballs underneath the ramp, providing a colorful background, and a small wheel powered by a servo to select a gumball and raise it into the ramp for play. However, this proved difficult due to the lack of a significant enough slope (and therefore gravity) to ensure a ball would be dispensed. Eventually, we decided to make the dispenser part a separate, vertical part so it could be easily removed and dispense without as many jams.

3. An additional goal was to figure out how to make the game easily extendable. What if you wanted to play a full game of Skeeball with your gumball instead of just a single roll? What if you wanted to play a game where you only get your gumball after hitting a point value greater than 40? To make this happen, a part was 3D printed to house a servo that could take a gumball coming from the gameboard and send it back into the playing field or back to the user, thus allowing numerous game possibilities.

Design: Pretty lights!

We also wanted this Skeeball machine to be unique and attract attention. There’s no better way to do that than to add pretty, eye-catching lights. We gave each chute an individual ring of LEDs that would light up to celebrate getting the points from that chute. Different animations and colors could be programmed for different point values.

Since the final product was going to be made out of clear acrylic and the chutes were to be 3D printed, there were numerous options on where to place each hole’s LED strip. A series of chutes were 3D printed, and we experimented with different colored filament (white vs. semi-transparent to see how the light appeared in each), and placement of the LED strip (flush with the outside, flush with the inside, or inside the chute itself). We found it was possible to fit each strip inside the chute despite being only 1/8” thick. Soon, we printed each chute in semi-transparent filament, cut each LED strip to size, and embedded them with the proper wiring. We then created the code to show certain animations for certain actions.

Let the construction commence

At last, construction began on the final product. I laser cut and etched guidelines on 3/8” and 1/4” acrylic  to make assembly and placement as easy as possible. Then, I installed and 3D-printed each of the chutes and tubes along with their sensors for the gameboard. We used black filament for the chutes to eliminate the impact of ambient light on the receiver. Since each chute uses five wires for the transmitter and receiver of the IR beam sensor, a PCB was made to make organization easier for all 35+ wires. An addition of the three wires for each LED strip (nine total for 27 additional wires) made for a mess. To help, each set of transmitter/receiver wires were zip tied together, and all wires were labeled with PWR, GND, and DATA. We used and connected a separate power supply for the LED light strips.

Next, we constructed the ramp. Each piece was cut to size and then put in place with acrylic cement. Two solid 1” OD acrylic rods were used to hold the rubber band launcher. The ramp was 3D printed in a variety of different trial angles before deciding on the best one. The ramp was supported with rubber foam and padded with cork to provide a more natural motion and dampen any impacts on the hard plastic. A holder for the dispenser was 3D printed, as well as return chutes for any ball going back into the playing field and for any ball coming back to the player. The housing for the servo that controlled where a previous played ball was going to go (either back to the user or back into the ramp) was then added.

Conclusions

The Skeeball Gumball Machine was full of its own unique challenges, each needing to be solved before continuing on to create the final product. The game was designed with extensions in mind, and these extensions could end up making the game even more special. Maybe a second Kinoma Create could talk to the Kinoma Create that is operating the board? Maybe this second Kinoma Create would be in the hands of an observer, who might have special powers to select a certain point value that would reward double the points if the player hits it on the next launch? Maybe you can be the one to make this extension?

We can’t wait to bring it to an event near you!

John is a Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science student at Stanford University with a background in content creation, manufacturing, and graphic design.

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As a maker, I know that being faced with a large project can feel intimidating. The journey from idea to final physical form always contains questions and unexpected problems that need to be resolved before reaching the final goal. Careful planning and CAD modeling both help the process, but it is often difficult to know if something will really work until it can be seen in physical form.

That’s why I am a firm believer in making with cardboard.

Prototyping for the masses

In the early stages of prototyping, I’ve grown to love tackling problems with basic materials on hand. While the final product will be made out of a sturdier materials such as wood, plastic, or metal, they’re tough to work with and time consuming to form. You don’t want to be halfway into the build, realize that a key feature of your project isn’t going to work, and have to restart—especially if the final materials are expensive or rare. This is where cardboard has proven helpful in my creation process. The benefits of working with cardboard are numerous – it’s plentiful, cheap, and easy to shape and cut. I really saw the power of such a simple material first-hand in my projects as a Kinoma Maker in Residence this summer.

Cardboard as a learning process

One of the first projects I worked on at Kinoma was the Tank Control chair. When envisioning the project’s ideal form factor, the other Makers-in-Residence and I wanted to experience different modes of controlling the tank that were physical. At those early stages, we didn’t know that the controls would take the form factor of a chair. We started out considering slide potentiometers and rotary potentiometers, and we wanted to find out what each form factor might require.

Using two inexpensive, plastic rotary potentiometers, a cardboard box, and a glue gun stick, the beginnings of the eventual tank chair took shape. Cutting up a small box, I made two quick “handles,” each made out of two rectangles of cardboard that were then glued together. I pulled the plastic knob off each potentiometer, found that the leftover shaft press-fit nicely into the middle of a small servo hub, and used that increased surface area to glue onto our makeshift cardboard paddles. Just like that, in under ten minutes, we had a working prototype.

One of the nicest things about a simple physical model in cardboard is that it is very easy to pull unexpected observations when testing a particular prototype. For example, we found that the handles would need to be much longer to have the desired effect, and that we would need much sturdier potentiometers. These observations helped us move forward with the project.

Making a Skeeball Gumball Machine with cardboard

Cardboard was used even more in the Skeeball Gumball Machine project. An initial challenge was determining exactly how gumballs would be dispensed into the playing field. We knew acrylic would make up the majority of the final project, but that material was too expensive to use in testing out the gumball dispensing mechanics.

Originally, the idea was that gumballs would be stored underneath the playing field, and would rotate one at a time into play with the help of a servo and a 3D-printed wheel. This seemed doable at first, but I wanted to be sure. Using just cardboard and a glue gun, I created multiple “dispensers” to test out. I first tested a zigzag pattern that lined all the gumballs into a single file and filtered them into the rotating wheel. But I learned that the zigzag pattern would need to be precise in order to avoid jams. After that, I removed the zigzag pattern and attempted to dispense the gumballs without a single file line. I also tried rotating the wheel 90 degrees. Neither worked.

While these failures were disheartening, they led to observations that ended up paying off. The angle of the gumball reservoir was too shallow, and gravity was not enough to ensure a gumball would be selected. This led to another prototype that used gravity to our advantage, and it ended up working fine. We used cardboard again to figure out the ramp angle and angle of the playing field. Because cardboard is so easy to bend, it was pivotal in answering each of these questions, and led to observations that informed the final product. I’ll be posting more about this project soon, so stay tuned.

3D Printing and Making with Cardboard: A love story

While 3D printing a prototype is not as fast as making a prototype out of cardboard, it is better for more precise parts. This is especially true for parts with geometries that are hard to make with cardboard, such as circles or cylinders. 3D printed mockups can typically be sketched in CAD software, then printed in just hours (depending on size and complexity). This is faster, safer, easier, and more precise than using wood or metal. 3D printed parts are also versatile, as they can be used in the prototyping process and the final product.

3D printing played a role in rapid prototyping the Skeeball Gumball Machine at the beginning of the design process, and as part of the final product. Numerous iterations of the dispensing mechanism of the gumball machine were tested with 3D printed parts paired with cardboard. We also used 3D printed parts to test out numerous iterations of the bracket on the Tank Control chair. Small changes could be easily made, and since each part could be printed in under five hours. With 3D printing, we were able to develop the bracket much quicker than if we had used wood or metal, and much easier than perfecting the dimensions in cardboard.

Time efficient, cost effective

Each of these prototypes took less than 30 minutes to create, and best of all, were very inexpensive. Cardboard gives makers the huge advantage of insight into prototype dimensions, angles, and simple mechanical designs. Despite this, it isn’t perfect for certain prototyping projects. Smaller, precise parts are often more easily made with 3D printers. I have found that the combination of using quickly designed and manufactured 3D-printed parts along with cardboard can lead to even more insights than cardboard alone. And while strong enough for many projects, weight bearing projects should be prototyped with a more sturdy material, such as wood.

Saving time and money is professional

I used to think that cardboard prototypes looked silly and unprofessional. I felt that using such a cheap material couldn’t possibly be helpful, and that you only really know what will happen until you use the final material. While there is a grain of truth to that last statement, experimenting with cardboard knocks out a majority of unanticipated problems. Questions about sizes, shapes, and angles don’t need to be solved with the exact material, since most any semi-sturdy material will do – and the properties of cardboard make it a worthy substitute.

It took me a few years to realize that my fear about professionalism was misguided. Anyone you present a prototype to will understand the power of cardboard, especially when the final project benefits from such a time and cost-effective approach that enables rapid iteration and leads to a better final product.

John is a Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science student at Stanford University with a background in content creation, manufacturing, and graphic design.

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Hacking to solve social issues brings out great ideas from developers. The ideathon held last week, featuring POP and Kinoma, was an opportunity for participants to learn new hardware and software tools and apply them to prototypes designed to improve the quality of life. Japanese Technology Professionals Association (JTPA) and Silicon Valley Innovation Forum (SVIF) hosted the event, with many of the participants from the Japanese Student Society.

Attendees were asked to solve a social issue using Kinoma or POP prototyping platforms, and at the end deliver presentations of their solution. POP is a mobile app that allows designers to link wireframes, so gridded paper and colored pencils were supplied. We provided various sensors and several Kinoma Create devices, and a few members of our team were available to answer Kinoma-related questions.

First: Workshop at Kinoma

Before the ideathon, several JTPA members came to our office for a short workshop. Andy walked them through the main features of Kinoma Create such as connecting to Wi-Fi, running sample applications, and attaching sensors. Everyone downloaded Kinoma Studio and Basuke taught them how to build UI elements and program hardware modules in KinomaJS. A couple of developers brought their own Kinoma Create devices to the workshop and got them up and running for the first time.

Hacking for good

Like most meetups, the night started with networking, pizza, and drinks. Then, the attendees learned the basics of POP and Kinoma and spent some time brainstorming with their groups. Post-its, hardware sensors, and beer bottles covered the tables as attendees tossed ideas around. It was fun to see groups waving their hands in front of infrared sensors, tapping capacitive touch sensors, and flashing LEDs while running the Pin Explorer application on Kinoma Create.

After about half an hour members from each group stood up and explained their ideas, which varied greatly. They included:

• An app that will help users track their spending habits. When creating a budget, it would be particularly useful for hidden costs—such as transportation—that are difficult to plan ahead for since prices constantly change.
• An education app to make learning more appealing. A teacher in this group raised the issue that students do not always realize that lessons in school can be practical in the real world. So they chose to solve this problem. They used an accelerometer attached to a Kinoma Create to demonstrate a real life problem related to trig functions, a subject that many students reluctantly learn about without understanding why. Their goal was to make a Q&A style app with answers that incorporate videos and other media—much more expressive than simple text. 

There was only about an hour left to start making the actual apps, and only a small subset of the room attended the workshop before the event. Despite this, almost all of the teams successfully hooked up sensors to a Kinoma Create. Three teams used them in their final presentations.

Improving care of elderly patients

The winning team used Kinoma Studio and Kinoma Create to start an app that will alert hospital/retirement home assistants if an elderly patient is away from their bed for too long at nighttime. A complete version of the project would include a Kinoma Create connected to a motion sensor and accelerometer that goes in the patient’s room and communicates with a mobile app to alert the caretaker of the problem. They managed to start writing code despite the time constraints and very little experience with Kinoma Studio and Kinoma Create.

Returning to JTPA

We were delighted to be invited back to the JTPA meetup. JTPA hosted the first meet-up with Kinoma this past January, where it was great to see people with both software and hardware backgrounds interacting with Kinoma Create. We had a great time joining such an enthusiastic group of makers for the second time and hope to see some of them continue working on their apps!

The Japanese Technology Professionals Association (JTPA) is a non-profit that supports technology-oriented Japanese professionals working in Silicon Valley. JTPA also shares technology information between Japan and Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley Innovation Forum (SVIF) is a non-profit organizational committee striving to be a part of the innovative spirit of Silicon Valley and bring that back to business partners and ventures.

JSS is the Japanese Student Society based at San Jose State University to promote education about Japanese culture, and help students learn from and network with business professionals.

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I had the pleasure of attending SIGGRAPH 2015 in Los Angeles. The Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group in Graphics (ACM SIGGRAPH) community is not constrained by real-world limitations. They are bound by the philosophy that “if you can dream it, you can build it.” The culmination of the community’s effort is showcased at the annual SIGGRAPH Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques.

Interactive immersion and photorealism

The community has mainly been evolving along two fronts: interactive immersion and photorealism.

Interactive immersion was first demonstrated in 1967 by Ivan Sutherland’s head-mounted motion-tracked stereo-optic display of a wireframe cube, but has been frustrated by the lack of real-time rendering hardware for decades, until recently with the advent of inexpensive virtual reality (VR) displays such as the Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard and others. There has been an explosion of interest and applications in the past year.

Photorealism has been advancing steadily since Bui Tuong Phong developed a mathematical model of specular (shiny) highlights in 1973, by incorporating a ton of mathematics and physics: ordinary and partial differential equations, manifolds and topology, radiative transport, reflection, refraction. This year brought major advances in the photorealistic rendering of human skin, hair, and fluids.

Interoperability: Science and art, gaming and film

The SIGGRAPH community is an unlikely coalition of left-brained and right-brained people where the scientists are inspired by the creations of the artists, and the artists are enamored with the technology developed by the researchers. Similarly, the game industry is blown away by the realism achieved by film industry developments, and the film industry is anxious to incorporate the game industry’s cheating hacks to dramatically reduce their frame rendering time.

The community has its reach in:

SIGGRAPH Studio and exhibition

The SIGGRAPH Studio offers hands-on experimentation right at the conference. Here you can build interactive widgets to amuse your friends.

There is also the SIGGRAPH exhibition, where manufacturers of graphically-related products display their wares. These were my personal favorites:

• Tech Paper: Co-dimensional Non-Newtonian Fluids (A simulation of mayonnaise and hot stringy pizza).
• Animation: – Lava (A volcano love story).
• Emerging Technologies: An Auto-Multiscopic Projector Array for Interactive Digital Humans (A life size “holographic” display).
• Exhibition: A pressure sensitive multitouch pad.
• Studio: 3D printed candy.

SIGGRAPH → Kinoma

On the Kinoma team, we utilize the techniques and insights from applications of computer graphics to improve the utility, robustness and speed of our graphically-related APIs.

Of particular relevance to my current work were sessions on scalable graphics, including scaling variations of icons, vector graphics animation, techniques of robust numerical computation, and the new Vulkan high-speed graphics API.

SIGGRAPH provides a vision of future applications; we then get a head start on new development. This ensures the Kinoma developer community has mature and reliable software ready for deployment when new applications come out of the labs and into the mainstream.

Additionally, SIGGRAPH enables us to keep abreast of developing standards, as well as influence their evolution.

Upcoming SIGGRAPH events

SIGGRAPH was an incredible experience. They recently released a few videos from the conference, including the inspiring Keynote Address by Joichi (Joi) Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab.

If you want to see all the great things that SIGGRAPH has to offer in person, the next few SIGGRAPH events are:

• SIGGRAPH Asia 2015 in Kobe, Japan, 2-5 Nov 2015
• SIGGRAPH 2016 in Anaheim, CA, USA, 24-18 July 2016
• SIGGRAPH 2017 in Los Angeles, CA, USA, 30 July – 3 Aug 2017

I hope to see you there!

Ken Turkowski is a Senior Software Engineer on the Kinoma team at Marvell. He specializes in 2D & 3D graphics, digital video, image processing, computer vision, image compression, signal processing, dynamics, and numerical analysis. Over the course of 24 years, he served as Chair, Vice-Chair, and Treasurer of ACM SIGGRAPH’s Silicon Valley Chapter. Ken has worked for or consulted for Dolby Laboratories, Google, Apple, Adobe, Fakespace Labs, Intuitive Surgical, and Stanford University. He has published several papers, and hold seven patents. Ken received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and his M.Engr., Elect. Engr. & Com. Sci. from University of California at Berkeley.

Photo credits: Interactive 3D Modelling in Outdoor Augmented Reality Worlds: A Research Thesis for the Degree of the Doctor of Philosophy, By Wayne Piekarski. Single-View Hair Modeling Using A Hairstyle Database, by Hu, Ma, Luo & Li; Detailed Spatio-Temporal Reconstruction of Eyelids, by Bermano, Beeler, Kozlov, Bradley, Bickel &Gross; Codimensional Non-Newtonian Fluids by Bo Zhu; Disney•Pixar’s “Lava”: Moving Mountains; An Auto-Multiscopic Projector Array for Interactive Digital Humans; Sensel; 3D Systems.

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Throughout the summer, Kinoma’s Makers in Residence have been actively developing with Kinoma Create and KinomaJS. They have reached milestones with numerous projects that they are excited to share. Some of them are robust personal projects, and others are examples of Kinoma products used to prototype a larger idea.

Monster Match Gumball Machine

The Monster Match game first appeared at Maker Faire Bay Area, where it was met with great enthusiasm. Players would program their monster onto an NFC card at one Kinoma Create and a separate tablet, then play the matching game on the second Kinoma Create. With a successful match, the machine would dispense a gumball as a prize. However, this demo required an Internet connection and access to an HTML web page to pick your monster. Alice and Alex set out to streamline the project by redesigning the programmatic side of the game, removing the need for an Internet connection and the separate tablet for access to the selection page. They built the UI of the programmatic portion from the ground up to work with Adafruit’s PN532 NFC/RFID controller breakout board. Now, in addition to programming an NFC card with a monster, users can check to see how many tries they have left to win a gumball by placing their NFC card back on the reader. Also, if the user forgets which monster he or she has chosen, the monster will creep back into the screen as a reminder and the user can then continue confidently.

The Kinoma team brought a version of this game to Maker Faire Tokyo, where we substituted the gumball machine for a screen that displayed a photo of the player that was triggered by whether or not they matched the monster. Come see another version of Monster Match at Maker Faire New York in September. Want to make your own? Keep an eye out for an upcoming project page.

CoAP Tank and Controls

 Another interactive demo in progress is the tank robot and its control system. Using Kinoma Create and serial communication, Tanisha, Alice, and John interacted an entirely new motor controller, the Sabertooth 2×5, with an existing robot kit. As proof of concept, they started with simple graphical controls based on Kinoma Create’s touch screen. Originally, they used HTTP to communicate between the tank robot and the controls, but the delay time was too great. They switched to CoAP, which proved to be way more responsive. Once they were able to get variable speed control with the software UI, they graduated to hardware controls. An early prototype of this control system consisted of two trim pots attached to cardboard handles and Kinoma Create through hot glue and duct tape. Next, they moved to metal panel-mount potentiometers and larger wooden poles to drive the robot and tell it how fast to move.

They then decided to design and laser cut 3D printed parts that will secure the levers to their respective potentiometers that could be mounted to an armchair. The armchair is outfitted with LED lights that react responsively to the direction the user points the lever. This project will be further developed by refining the details surrounding brackets and support structures.

drop: Smart Umbrella

Alistair started the smart umbrella handle to follow in the pursuit of IoT technology that seamlessly fits in our lives. He prototyped his idea with Kinoma Create and 3D printed parts. The current iteration is a proof of concept involving electroluminescent wire and PVC tubing to diffuse the light, all encased in a 3D printed umbrella handle.

In addition, Alex is working to interface the Wunderground weather API with Kinoma Create to support the drop Smart Umbrella project. This API can return a detailed forecast for the next week, including the given chance of precipitation per day. With this information, the drop Smart Umbrella can react accordingly, glowing if the precipitation exceeds a certain threshold and alerting the user to bring the umbrella along for the day. He is working on putting the weekly forecast into local storage so daily Internet access is not necessary.

Alistair and Alex hope to bring version 1.0 of this product to life in the coming weeks with the inclusion of the recently-introduced Kinoma Element!

Smart Water Bottle

John drew inspiration for the Smart Water Bottle project from his own life. As a runner, he knows he should be drinking more water, but has never been able to quantify how much he consumes every day. To solve this problem, he has developed a base that can be strapped to any water bottle to track water consumption. With a push of a button, the base takes readings from a force-sensitive resistor attached to the bottom. Kinoma software interprets the reading and computes a new color for the RGB LEDs that shine onto the bottle. As the user gets closer and closer to the daily water intake goal, the bottle will change from red to green.

John 3D printed cup bases to house electronics as a proof of concept and to further develop the design. He used Kinoma Studio, Kinoma Create, and a solderless breadboard to prototype the electronics. Next, he will print a custom PCB to fit into the base and continue to refine the product.

Alert Blocks

Alert Blocks started as Tanisha’s proposal for an LED-based traffic notification system to keep users informed about when they should leave for their destination. This then evolved into a broader idea: Alert Blocks would provide LED notifications for multiple services, including stock performance and Twitter notifications. Tanisha began working on a companion app that would customize and configure Alert Blocks. To build a working prototype, she had acrylic pieces designed, cut, and etched. Each block has a hole cut out in the back to provide space for LED electronics that will be powered by a Kinoma device.

Next, Tanisha plans to further polish the companion app and interaction with different APIs to provide the most customizability of the blocks, and improve the usability of the Alert Blocks through box design and electronics.

Kinoma Stacks

Kinoma has made huge progress in simplifying the IoT development process. To further advance this vision, Alistair is working on an ambitious project to make prototyping even easier with Kinoma Stacks. Kinoma Stacks is a concept modular IoT creation kit built on Kinoma Element. In an attempt to make electronics prototyping as easy as playing with LEGO blocks, Kinoma Stacks will enable makers to switch out hardware components in a plug-and-play type format to end up with a smart device prototype in just minutes.

Additional Hardware

In addition to these projects, members of our team have been interfacing different hardware components for future use. They are currently working on a port from Arduino for the Adafruit OLED screen that can be used for the Kinoma Stacks project. They also successfully made the tank robot do basic tracking using the Pixy Camera. They hope to use the Pixy tracking on other robots to have a more interactive play-style. They plan to release this code to the public in order to simplify the prototyping process using common hardware.

Calling All Kinoma Developers: Show us what you’re making!

These are just a few of the many projects that the Makers in Residence aspire to bring to life with Kinoma, and they’re excited to see what other projects the Kinoma developer community will create. If you have a project you’re excited about and want to share, email it to pr@kinoma.com and we will feature it on our website and on Kinoma’s Instagram. Check out our Instructables page for more inspiration.

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Kinoma is excited to formally introduce four new team members who join our quest to prototype, develop, JavaScript, and open-source the Internet of Things. They bring proven talent and developer spirit to the team.

Kouis joins Kinoma as a User Experience Designer, Lizzie as Developer Evangelist,
Brook as a Software Engineer, and Will as Developer Support

• Kouis joins the Kinoma team as a User Experience Designer after earning a Master’s Degree in Web Design and New Media with a focus on User Experience Design from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He also works on web design and development, trade show design, product photography, production, and graphics for the Kinoma team. Our updated website, booth graphics, collateral, and more are a result of his work.

• Lizzie graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Computer Science. She is the first member of the Kinoma team to have studied KinomaJS as a part of her formal education. While at UC Berkeley, she took a class on Human Computer Interaction taught by Kinoma’s own UX Architect, Dr. Andy Carle. She then joins the Kinoma team as Developer Evangelist, and is working on software engineering focused around the needs of developers, and interacting with developers, makers, and customers to help them get the most out of Kinoma. Hitting the ground running, Lizzie demoed Kinoma technology and networked with developers at O’Reilly OSCON her first week on the job.

• Brook joins us a Software Engineer after graduating from Tufts University, where he studied Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. He first met members of the Kinoma team at the Make MIT hardware hackathon and prototyping competition. Kinoma sponsored this event, and provided Kinoma Create hardware and mentoring to teams using Kinoma technology. During the hackathon, Brook bravely worked with Kinoma Create and Kinoma Studio on Linux, and now, as a Kinoma software engineer, he is working on our upcoming Bluetooth LE protocol stack (powered by JavaScript, of course!). He’s also building out projects with Kinoma hardware and software, such as the Synthesizer project which demonstrates the power of using the audio output hardware pins of Kinoma Create.

• Will was one of the very first third-party Kinoma Create developers; he built the well-received Ultimate Aquarium Controller demo developed with Kinoma Create that we showed at SXSW 2014. Now, he joins us for Developer Support on the Kinoma Forums. Will is also putting together new reference materials that will address the more common inquiries and topics he’s noticed trending on the Kinoma Forums.

These new Kinoma team members were selected to ensure our developers and customers the best support possible. We’re happy to have them! Let’s #StartMaking.

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