Metal Monkey Hat

Here are some friends who were kind enough to let the monkey gnaw on their head.

metal monkie :: modeled by zombiemonkie from lara grant on Vimeo.

choose one item from each list:

Actions

• squeezing
• stroking
• tapping
• shaking
• dancing
• caressing
• breathing
• pushing

Things

• feathers
• cup
• monkey
• playground ball
• sneakers
• lentils
• pudding

Responses

• color
• sound
• animation
• speech
• music
• kinetic movement

Other than having a week to come up with and execute the project, the above choices were the constraits.

I chose: shaking/dancing + monkey + sound/color

I’ll tell you that a monkey devouring your head while possessing you to control the tempo of music by furiously banging your head IS metal.

The monkey was formed by my two hands as a felt hat. In the back, is a pouch I constructed to store the hardware, an arduino, breadboard, and an accelerometer.

I have not worked with an XBee yet, so there was a USB cord supplying power and sending data to my computer through arduino to processing to produce a sketch. The sketch being one song, one phrase and one shade of red that corresponded with each of the 3 phases of brutal metalness you are able to achieve.

As you shake your head, the sensor takes readings on the z-axis, which translates as an up to down, chin to chest shaking of the head aka *head-banging*

level 1 of metalness (slow head-bobbing)

song: U2 – with or without you

color: light red

text: ” easy listenin’ “

level 2

song: Poison – nothin’ but a good time

color: medium red

text: ” more metal than puppies, but not by much “

level 3

song: dethklok – themesong

color: blood red

text: ” a fuckin’ monkey is eating your head, that’s metal! “

In processing I used the sonia library, and found it quite easy, though I was just loading and calling songs. The most challenging part of the project was mapping the values of the accelerometer to play the songs in a linear fashion. The values I received started at a central point of the full range of values you could get, it then either went up or down from there. I first applied some capacitive coupling to my circuit to smooth out my readings, which were pretty jumpy. which was done by bridging my power and ground with a capacitor.

Second, I wrote my code so it took the last byte read and the first read, took the difference from those, then using a relational operator put it in one of the three phases of metalness. Included is a short video that shows how jumpy and difficult it was reading the actual head-banging movement. hopefully, a higher quality video is to come.