More thoughts on the city

These thoughts are through research on Lewis Mumford, who was very well known for his writings on cities and architecture.

"The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity" - Lewis Mumford

RFID has homogenized our global community, it has domesticated internationalism through the introduction of biometric passports.

Replacable elements of a monoculture, each specialised in our own fields, just like an ants nest. Invisible layers are mounted over each other to create a unique maze which cannot be seen. We, as physical beings, can be considered invisible now because all that matters are our transactions which can track our locations in a virtual space.

Instructables

I have uploaded a complete tutorial on the solar powered Arduino board here

Completely self sufficient Arduino

This setup comprises of 2 solar cells, a 1N5817 power diode and a 9V rechargeable battery. The output is then transferred to the Arduino board.

Experiment Success

I have managed to use my now-portable Arduino board to interact with my RFID reader and give a simple output. The current output is one blinking LED light, but it would be extended using an LED driver to control a matrix of them in the next week or so. I will post up a video, pictures and some code tomorrow.

City Grids

New York City

San Francisco


Houston, Texas - 1942

EDB Gantries in Singapore

Here are there EDB Gantry locations in Singapore's Business District. They are controlled using RFID and are a source of economy for the government as motorists have to pay a certain amount everytime they enter the district at specific timings.

Portable Arduino

The Arduino 9V Adaptor

This amazing link has helped me make my Arduino board completely independant of the computer now. It is really simple and took me about 5 minutes to do. The next step would be to link the battery to my solar cells so that it becomes self sufficient.

metaDesk

The metaDesk is created by Hiroshi Iishi from the MIT Tangible Media Lab. I think it is a very useful resource as a reference for building tangible interfaces.