Time to dance!

One hour until launch now.

The group has worked intensely this passed week and although we are very excited about our project we are starting to long for the exhibition to be over so that we can relax and have a long night sleep.

Yesterday the judging panel went around to look at everyones projects. At that time we hadn't got everything working and we hurried to set things up. to our frustration when it was our time to show that we had done we couldn't get the speaker to work, not the lights and in one of the three soles the button got stuck. We felt quite brought down after that.

We went for lunch and did some shopping, and then we came back and started working on getting things to work. It was like a miracle; in just an hour we managed to solve the problem with the buttons getting stuck, we manage to hook up the speaker, a fourth sole and finally the lights worked. I can't fully explain out relief.

Showtime!

/Annica

Let's do this!

23h until D-day. This is it, we have to make everything work and look good before we leave Hyper tonight. We'll get some time tomorrow for micro management, but it feels like we can't really count that as anything, honestly.

The group's really tired.

I've lately felt like there's a huge burden on the shoulders of me and Robin since we're the developers, every problem encountered was up to us to solve. One of the major problems we've had was the "double beat". When we pressed the button on the backside of the Sole, there were sometimes two beats (or even three), instead of the one beat that was intended. Trouble shooting for this problem was a nightmare since we had no idea whether there was a hardware malfunction, if we hadn't connected the wires properly or if there were problems with the code.

This issue would take down the whole project if not solved. And as I said before. That was up to us.

After consulting the tech. god Niklas Bivald - we figured it out. And it wasn't our fault actually. There was a bug in "Processing".

We'd done noting wrong, still, hours of trouble shooting had gone to waste.

Anyway...

Due to the lack of energy I can sense some unnecessary irritation sometimes, but most of the time we're laughing as usual. There's stress, but excitement as well. Every one's eager to try the final product. We're very good at dividing the tasks among us, and therefore I have no doubt we'll pull everything together in these final hours of creation.

Blood, sweat and tears.

But also lots of NOT blood, perfume and laughter.

Let's do this!

// Joacim Svedlund

Reflections of love

I want to dedicate this post to my wonderful team members to explain the work they have been doing as well as show them my appreciation. So here they are, in no specific order, and with me included.

Project manager Robert

Robert has been responsible for gathering the group for meetings, making sure everyone is involved in the project and keeping up the spirit. He is also responsible for the projects logo as well as the logo for the entire exhibition. As people realized how amazing he is they stole his attention and sucked him in to work with the exhibition magazine. But he has still managed to keep his pretty brown eyes on the team and the project and help with the soldering.

Communication manager Linnéa

Linnéa has been responsible for communication between our team and the exhibition team- something made simpler as Linnéa volunteered to be one of the four project managers for the exhibition dealing with the venue, the invitations, website, sponsors and other things in favor for everyone. And she has been the one who has kept us informed on how things will work once we go live. But then she like us all has tried out soldering, logo-placement and building.

Art director & Developer Joacim

Joacim together with Robin has been responsible for working with the actual technology in this project; a major responsibility as none of us knew anything about coding or programing at the start of the project. Joacim is also responsible for our teaser trailer. The pice of technology that was handed to us was the multifunctional Aurdino, and Joacim had been very impressive in his persistence not to ease up on our goals or settle for less.

Art director & Developer Robin

As mentioned Robin and Joacim has been working with the code for our project and without their major effort in this we wouldn't have anything to show tomorrow. If nothing goes wrong, by the end of today we will have 8 soles controlling 8 different sounds and 4 different lights to create a true disco experience. I am in awe that we got this far starting from zero. Robin also managed to set us up with a set of vinyl stickers with our logo which we feel are great for the overall experience that we want to give.

Construction manager Annica

That is me. And my core task in this project has been managing the physical material needed, such as the actual soles, all the wiring, lights and other parts needed for the project. I have by no means done this myself, but it has been my main focus. I also brought the licensed electrician Stig Edberg into the project which has been a major help both when getting materials and making sure the things we have built are secure. Stig is also this groups sponsor.

with love

/Annica

Den enes löd den andres död (One man's solder the other man's death)

In the early beginning of this project, all the Riders had was a simple switch connected to this wierd microchip thing. We sang out loud once we got that little led-light to shine. The group was exited but very nervous at this point. How on earth could we build something innovative and exiting with this pile of junk? Loaded with uncertain smiles and great visions we began the most amazing journey.

We had our ups and down. Here's a short summary of our process:
UP: Great Idea was born
DOWN: Found out that this actually would include coding.
UP: Got going with a little help from Max Werner.
DOWN: We created a Magnetic Field Wireless Sound Experience. Very cool but not right.
UP: We made "the shit" to play with sound. (Thanks to Niklas, the Tech dude).
DOWN: We realized that this will cost us like. A lot.
UP: Stig join the game and solved almost every hardware issue.
DOWN: Soldering phone cords was way harder then expected.
UP: It actually worked

Today we're exhausted. But happy. Very happy. Eight pairs of S.O.L.E.S were to be completed today. Now, less then 48 hours to launch.





/Robert Lindgren

problems and problem solution

Yesterday was a long day. The Arduino Riders went to Stigs garage to do some "masculine" handcraft. Unfortunately the camera was out of battery so we don't have any nice pictures to show you... We tried soldering our phone cables with the buttons and connect them to the arduino. After a few attempts we managed to make it work. But our buttons and cables are soo tiny and fragile so we are kind of worried now, what if a really fat person like Robert comes in?

We are trying to solve that, and not by having a scale in our exhibition space but making the soles even more solid. Stig taught us how to use the "shrinking cable" for that. We are also tapeing a lot which is good.

This is the recipie for the soles:
- 1 swedish crown
- 1 phonecable (6 m)
- "Shrinking cable"
- Tape
- Switch buttons (4,3 mm)
- Silicon pads (party feet)

This is our schedule for the remining time:
21/10 Wednesday
- Complete the Soles
- Finalize sound
- Buy light and other stuff
- Make sure that everyone has control over the blogg posts that needs to be made for Thursday
- Mount the stuff to the sealing, lamps and discoball

- Speakers

22/10 Thursday

- Finalize blog
- Finalize the article
- Testing
- Exhibition logos and banners

23/10 Friday
- Exhibition presentations at 10AM

To be continued.

/Linnéa Becker

This is twisted!

Our dreams have come true, we will be able to use phone cables instead of boring straight cable from the sole to the arduino, it's going to look awesome! We even plan to connect the phone cable to the sole with a regular phone-jack . If and how we can do this I will investigate during the day. This is the mornings great news. We are so excited, we eat cables for breakfast!

After some consulting with the tech-aid Nicklas we are now fairly sure it is not the button that is causing the double sound problem, but rather it might be the code program: Processing. Our developers Joacim and Robin are working hard on investigating this and might move to try out Flash and see if the same code works better in that program.

We expect this day to be a day of problem solving, decisions and building. Below is our very own soldering-hen!

The exhibition magazine is now finished witch means that Robert can turn his focus back to the group. Linnéa is deeply involved in the Exhibition group and we are very proud of the work she is doing there as well as the energy and ideas she brings to us; The Arduino Riders!

love and lust

/Annica

Arduino Ridaz fo sho

Black carpet

Today the carpet were delivered. The carpet were transparent so we had a mission to make it black. With some spraypaint and some ol'school graff artist we went outside...

...we realized that one spraycan wasn't enough, so tomorrow Annica is coming with some new cans and we will finish it up. Our sticker that Petter Söderberg from Jenå Reklam hooked us up with is working really nice, thanks Petter!

Stay tuned for the final result!

Big love

Robin

Finish line in sight

Final week and time for the Project Manager to step up his game! Exiting times. These four coming days will probably be a lot about planning, managing and distributing time, since in this stage, all we got is an early prototype, some first ideas on a case film and one hell of a To Do-list. Basically we have this week to build, test and finalize our project. Something a normal group of humans would need about six months to manage. Us on the other hand, we are pretty fucking far from average. We are the Arduino Riders.

/Robert Lindgren, father of four and project manager.