Monday, 19 March 2018

Five brilliant Bare Conductive projects you may have missed

All in all it's just another conductive brick in the wall.

Things happen so quickly in the world of Bare Conductive that there are some projects you may have missed. Or you could be new to electric paint altogether and would like an idea of what can be achieved with the product patented by four graduates of the London College of Art and Imperial College in 2009. Some of these projects are on an epic scale and involve teams of professional designers and interactive artists; but the beauty of Bare Conductive is that anyone can start using it for simple applications.

1. Wall of Sound 


German design agency Fischer Appelt turned a blank wall in their offices into a fully interactive audio experience, using Bare Conductive paint and the Touch Board. The ridiculously talented team painted retro ghetto blasters, amplifiers, speakers and reel to reel tape recorders with electric paint, with sensors painted into the wall to correspond, for example, with play, stop and volume control buttons. A Touch Board on the reverse side of the wall was programmed with the team's music selections and playlists.



2. Staircase alarm


This is a classic beginner project, either just for fun, pet surveillance or genuine home security. There is no need to paint directly onto your staircase - use masking tape or another self-adhesive backing on which to apply the conductive paint. Attach a speaker or buzzer to your Touch Board, program the Touch Board with the sound you want to be played, and apply a line of paint to connect the Touch Board with the staircase sensor strip. 





3. The wall that comes alive 


Branding and design agency Dalziel and Pow produced this interactive touch wall for a retail exhibition, to show how sensor-based technology could be used to create audio visual experiences more in common with freeform animation than traditional touchscreen technology. 



4. MIDI Piano


Another Bare Conductive classic. You can use a template to draw the keys of your piano onto card weighing at least 200gsm. The Touch Board will need to be set up in 'On Board Midi Mode' so that the sound of the piano notes can be played.  



5. Liquidity Lamp


In this project, industrial product designer Jose Maria Riesco used electric paint, diluted with baby oil, as a sensor to switch on a 220V bulb. The paint mixture is poured into a modified petri dish, triggering a signal in an Arduino microcontroller which turns the bulb on. Riesco's purpose for the piece is to alter people's perceptions of the domestic electronics around them and encourage new ways of interacting with them.


NEW BARE CONDUCTIVE PRODUCTS AVAILABLE


Rapid has recently added to its Bare Conductive range with a selection of new products – including two new kits based around the Touch Board. The Starter and Pro Kits are ideal for beginners and experienced makers respectively, while a Lamp Kit contains everything you need to transform a paper template into either a touch, dimmer or proximity lamp. Plus – just the thing for those large scale projects – one litre tins of conductive paint.  
    
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Wednesday, 31 May 2017

What should businesses tweet? Not this.

Social media. Some use it, some abuse it. Most people, however, just waste it. We are used to individuals using Twitter as an outlet for thoughts that would normally be filtered before they were ever published. But individuals are not governed by KPI's or ROI metrics.

Businesses, however, are different. They've heard about Twitter and know they should be on it. But when they are, they don't have a clue what to do. So they panic. Their attitude seems to be a 21st-century version of the Cartesian maxim: "I tweet, therefore I am."

But we should be issuing Anti-Social Media Behaviour Orders to some people responsible for their business accounts or those using personal accounts for business purposes. They need to understand that social media has to add value to their brand or be used to engage with customers in a meaningful way.

This phenomenon is at its worst, ironically, when these people gather at conferences designed to train them how to use social media effectively. Every week there seems to be one of these events going on somewhere. They each have their own #, of course. The tweets seem to fall into one of the following categories.

The I'm on my way!


You've all seen these. Safely tucked into their window seat on their suburban train, the sales & marketing middle manager of an SME captures the bucolic scene outside as they hurtle toward the metropolis, full of anticipation at their day ahead at the overpriced junket their CEO was sweet-talked into buying a place at six months ago by a nice young lady.

Oh dear.

The group selfie


Where three of four suits (never hipsters, of course) gurn in awkward poses with strangers under the illusion of 'networking'; the more social or digital the event, the more selfies clog up the timeline. Seriously, are these people really having the time of their lives?

 

The 'keynote'


The serial offender as far as I am concerned, where delegates accompany a blurred, poorly lit image of that session's speaker with an excitable tweet summarising the text of the current slide in the presentation, something like "Engagement is Key" or "A click is a gateway to a customer's soul". All these are basically saying are: I am here, watching this. I have justified my day out of the office. They are of no interest to anyone. Particularly when the presentation is concerned with the application of social media itself.
Recently I've noticed a variant on this. Where someone takes a picture of people doing the above - eyes down, so not actually looking at the presentation. This is either very meta or very rude! Perhaps it is just the modern equivalent of note-taking. But to me it is like watching a concert via your smartphone, even though you are there in the flesh.

 

The Don't stand so close to me


This kind of tweet I can understand. If you are exhibiting at a trade show you have to advertise your stand. Twitter is a free advertising platform so it pays to use it when you have a captive audience following a particular # and attending the event. But put some thought into how your tweet will present your brand and distinguish you from the competition. Why would anyone make a stampede to this floor space?

Feel free to issue your own ASMBO's. I would love to add to the Hall of Shame.
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