Monday, November 14, 2011
Pants Interface - Open Hardware Summit & Maker Faire NY 2011
Medium Reality: design from the front lines: At the end of September, in a flurry of solder, wire bits, and threads, we finished a prototype Pants Interface controller. I threw it, still smoking, into a suitcase and flew off to New York to show it off - and ask for help. Here's what happened.
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4 comments:
While I am still curious as to what exactly the Pants Interface does; the Open Hardware Summer sounds like something that more theater folk should make the journey to. Regardless of my ineptitude and frustration around self made gadgets, it seems to be a slowly expanding part of the entertainment world, especially in theater. It seems like more and more things that we do/create require an extra level of control, and a place like Open Hardware Summit might not be a bad place for people like me who lack any experience with gadgetry to get at least a base knowledge of what to do or who to call when the situation arises.
I think this is really relevant to technical direction and probably other areas of the theater community. We often “reinvent the wheel” every time we face a problem: different td’s creating different solutions for the same problem. Slowly, we individually develop a library of solutions and a method for implementing them to new problems. If we could use one of the open source networks that the hacker/electronics world has pioneered, we could create a base of knowledge and a pool of different systems to overcome common problems we face. This could also free up more time to work on problems specific to the show or ones that the network hasn't run into yet.
I really like Wyatts idea of having a global TD library of solutions. It seems like every theatre, shop, ect... has their own little insights and tricks that would be awesome if the whole world knew.
In any case, I'm glad that the open source software trend has bled over into open source hardware. I didn't really know such a thing existed, let alone had its own get together. Open Hardware summer is definitely on my list of things to attend. The attendees seem to be really knowledgable and I would have a lot to learn there. I love the DIY mindset and I hope that more and more companies will consider operating under an open hardware license or an open trademark.
I can't believe no one's made a "I've got your Pants Interface right here!" joke yet...
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