Today the group met with both Tiger Party and Professor Lima.

During the Tiger Party meeting, the group presented their progress. They had done more work on refining the design idea and looked into some of the logistics of accomplishing it. Peter mentioned the use of a Microsoft Kinect to translate movement on the ground onto the building. Raphael and Ganesh were a bit hesitant at first but eventually agreed. Using a Kinect, location (and depth information) of the bodies on the street would be saved and tracked. A computer program could be used to interpret the bitmap and another program used to output the “shadows” (shapes) of the people onto the buildings mesh. Tiger party assigned us roles and asked that we modify the timeline.

Peter would be in charge of obtaining a Kinect, downloading Microsoft's SDK and programming what is needed to go from the Kinect's bit map to an animation on the computer's display. Wojciech would be responsible for figuring out how to output the computer's screen to the LEDs on the building. Lastly, Jeanna proposed a simple experiment using photoshop in which she could determine the pixel density and light intensity desired for this project, would would then determine the number and strength of LEDs in an array to create a “pixel.”

Raphael requested that Peter update the timeline to include the milestones and word to be done for each of the three members and their “mini” projects.

During class Thursday night Peter and Jenna also met with Professor Lima. They discussed some aggravations with the project. They mentioned that in order to do something truly ambitious with this project, it would require more than a year, and obtaining the Kinect would require immediate funding and a programmer that could show the groups the basic steps to getting started.

Lima adjusted the project accordingly. I postponed our proposal to the board to be our final presentation, rather than our midterm. He said our immediate goal should be to get a few breadboards, LEDs and an arduino with distance sensors to make a small prototype of our design. He said make it so that when someone waves their hands over the sensors, LED arrays output the shape of their hand. He also said to keep working on the attachment system and that one LED array mold printed out would go a long way during our presentation.

The shadow idea: