last week we tried to make a short simulation of our former concept with Max5. we ended up with 2 ‘sensors’; one for measuring the temperature in the installation and one for simulating proximity sensors around the perimeter of the installation. the latter was used to determine where the installation would ‘open up’. these two sensors ran on two different laptops and the data was transmitted to a third laptop that processed this data.

sensors

first of, the temperature sensor. the temperature in the tent was simulated by measuring the temperature of one of the cores of a laptop. this was done by using coretemp. this program measures the core temp and writes it to a cvs-file. this csv-file was than read in MAX, mapped to a value between 0-1 and send to the control node.

nodes

secondly the proximity node. this node uses so called ‘nodes’ in MAX. within the nodes box you can move your mouse. when you move your mouse in to one of the circles the node outputs a value, in this case between 0-1,  corresponding with the circle. when you move your mouse closer to the center of the circle this value increases. we made a circle of nodes simulating proximity sensors around the perimeter of our installation.

the data from these two sensors is send to a ‘control node’, the third laptop. on this laptop this data is received and processed in Max and than outputted to two text files. these text files are then read by rhino where, in real time, a model of our installation is manipulated. so if you approach a node in max on one laptop the corresponding ‘node’ in rhino opens up and reveals an opening and when the temperature rises in the core of the other laptop the color of the installation in rhino changes correspondingly from black to red.

finally we also found a role in the whole ecosystem of all groups. we had a ‘directional relation’ with the connection group. they would ‘tell’ us when someone left their installation on our side. when this happened the system would override the proximity sensors and open up our tent towards the connection group.

for everybody interested, you can download our max patches and grasshopper model here