That’s what was decided upon as a name.
Beloware some of the photos we took during development. Descriptions are in the captions.
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| Chirpees |
Also, videos
So the idea of these was to emulate a function of nature by using technology, but also to be able to invade public spaces and create a sonic environment similar to the one found in nature. This project was originally based off the LED Throwies, developed by the Graffiti Research Lab.
In order to properly do this, we needed to replicate birds. Which meant making the ATTiny chirp and not only produce a single note. This was achieved by having each Chirpee have an array of frequencies that each one would play. We later arbitrarily decided on a few bird types so that we could easily tell one from another.
- Gentoo. This Chirpee reacts to light. It has a fixed chirp. As its environment becomes illuminated, the chirps will become far apart. But you enclose Gentoo and cut its light source, it will get claustrophobic and start chirping at shorter intervals.
Code for Gentoo - Turacao. This Chirpee reacts to temperature. As it gets colder, its body functions will attempt to keep it alive by reacting strongly and nervously, therefore having it chirp faster. When it gets warmer though, the chirps are farther apart, sign of comfort. Also, each chirp and its duration is slightly affected by the previous chirp, as a sign of the birds short memory span.
Code for Turacao - Hoatzin. This Chirpee does not have any sensor. It does its own thing. It will alternate between a chirp that descends in pitch and a second, shorter chirp that consists only of one repeating note.
Code for Hoatzin - Lorikeet. This Chirpee senses light. It will use one very short chirp which it will repeat a number of times. If Lorikeet receives more light, it will repeat the chirp more, but then take a longer rest before chirping again.
Code for Lorikeet - Manakin. The MANAKIN reacts to light. When it chirps, the tone of the chirp is directly related to the light it receives. If it get less light, the chirp’s pitch gets higher. It if gets less light, the pich gets lower.
Code for Manakin
So those are the Chirpees. The schematics for the circuits are coming after the break.