You might have heard a lot of noise about the latest Nokia N900 from Nokia. Well we’re lucky enough to have just completed a piece of work: Rewind using the phone tablet for Hyper who launched PUSH, an open competition to creatives and hackers alike.
Knowing that selling the value of a platform is in what you can do with it (see Arduino :)) we thought we would revisit the 80s and devices of our youth and picked 4: the Viewmaster, the Rolodex, an FM Radio and the Speak & Spell.
This is what we ended up with after 3 weeks of very intensive work with some technical nuggets.
Now in 3D!
Remember those red and blue paper glasses? Did you see Jaws 3D or Friday the 13th Part 3?
Using the Nokia N900’s 5-megapixel camera and 800 X 480 widescreen display, you can create your own 3D memories. Look into the Viewmaster® to see miniature 3D images, or put on glasses to watch the show. Then create your own photo!
HOW DOES IT WORK?
A Nokia N900 is sitting inside the Viewmaster®. When you move the Viewmaster® to the left or to the right, you trigger a switch. An Arduino then sends a message over Bluetooth to the N900. A Python script receives that message and, using GStreamer (a library for controlling media playback that is included in Maemo 5.0), saves a frame from the camera as a JPEG. When two photos have been taken, numerical (a python library for manipulating arrays) is used to transform the size and color of the images, and pygame (an open-source python wrapper for controlling visuals,) is used to control the screen display.
Any 3D image actually needs two images. The two photos are taken several centimeters apart–about the distance between your two eyes. When you look into the Viewmaster, each eye is isolated to see only the photograph of what would be seen by that eye, and your brain resolves the two images into one 3D image. On the larger screen, the two images are colored red and blue and superimposed. The red and blue lenses of your glasses each cause one image to disappear, so each eye again sees a slightly different image, and your brain translates them into 3D.
Talk & Text
When E.T. needed to call his mates for a lift home, he hacked a Speak & Spell ™ to send an interplanetary text message. Now, with the help of the Nokia N900’s phone functionality and the Maemo platform , you too can text your friends using this much-loved childhood toy.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
A Nokia N900 and an Arduino are hidden inside this Speak & Spell©. When you press a key, the Arduino detects which key you have pressed and sends that information over Bluetooth to the N900.
The letters you see are actually the N900 screen. A python script receives the information from the Arduino and uses pygame, an open-source python wrapper for controlling visuals, to display images that mimic the original Speak & Spell display. The voice synthesis is also generated on the phone, using flite, a speech synthesis engine that we compiled to run on the N900’s ARM processor.
When you complete a text message, the D-Bus messaging service is used to send your message to the phone number that you entered.
Leave a Message
With a Rolodex© to keep track of phone numbers and newly available answering machines to take messages, businesses in the 1980s no longer missed that important phone call. Now, of course, contacts and voice mail are seamlessly integrated into the N900’s user interface. Travel back in time to call your favorite characters from Saturday morning cartoons.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
An Arduino connected to the Rolodex© detects the position of the wheel and sends that information over Bluetooth to the N900. Each position indicates a specific contact. A Python script receives the incoming information and uses the xtst library to emulate the key presses and screen touches that would be necessary to view that contact and, when you touch the screen of the phone, to place a call.
Phone FM
In the 1980s, we started to listen to music differently. Mix tapes, walkmen, and portable boom boxes allowed people to make personal soundtracks and share them with friends. These days, you can create and share a playlist with just a few clicks. Text your favorite 80s musician to the Nokia N900, and tune in to your playlist on an old school radio.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
The N900’s Maemo platform uses the D-Bus messaging service to allow different applications to send message and alerts to each other. When you send a text to this phone, it transmits the contents of your message over D-Bus to a Python script. The Python script then uses pylast (a library for communicating with last.fm) to send the artist’s name to last.fm and receive the mp3 files and cover art generated for that artist. The script then controls the screen display and music playback using GStreamer (a library for controlling media playback that is included in Maemo 5.0) and the pygame (an open-source python wrapper for controlling visuals).
Playback to the radio is controlled by the N900’s built-in FM transmitter. The transmitter can be set to broadcast at any frequency, an the phone’s audio will be picked up by any nearby radio set to the right station.
We also wrote a handy guide for hackers for anyone wanting to get their hands dirty with the phone and hooking it up to Arduino.
