Thursday, February 25, 2010

VCR DJ's and Morse Coding Walkie Talkies



The second presentation was give on the curious experiment our group had with circuit bending. Our main idea started with cracking open a few VCRs, figuring out how the work, and then mixing together VCR footage via projector and a mixer with a few speakers. We made alot of progress, unscrewing the circuit boards and reactivating broken VCR button controls.

Ultimately we got two of the once broken VCRs to play Home Alone vs. Independence day on projectors. Meanwhile I took a crack at the LG Dare Cellphone, to see if we could make a cellphone beepin lightshow as a backup project. One broken phone, and one broken VCR later we were ready to mix the working 2 VCRs.

-----And then it falls apart------
Unfortunately, due to the lack of covering to protect the fragile VCRs they were damaged in transit. The cell phone deconstruction didn't bring satisfying results, but luckily we had Jake's Walkie Talkies to resort to. (after contemplating making the radios into a tornado or a toilet bowl, which we decided was lame) Jake had the idea to incorporate morse code into the walkie talkies, essentially using a dead language of communication with the modern technology of radio frequencies. We cracked open one of the walkie talkies and managed to alter the circuits so that the beeping sounds could simulate morse code across the same frequency as the other walkie talkie.
It was a success! We pulled together a presentation and translated a o so subtle message about communication and technology into morse code.

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