How this started From the 11th floor, the Boston Massacre site looks like a Stonehenge-type primal monument, an ancient extraterrestrial landing spot: a wide circle of well-worn brass, studded with stars, enclosing a rough mosaic of cobblestones. Usually people are circulating in loose loops, not sure what they should be looking at.
What this has to do with placemaking After walking every day past dazed visitors, and guides in Revolutionary War attire, it dawned on me: it’s tough being a tourist in Boston. Maybe new technology -- which promises to deliver more relevant, more immediate information after all -- could help this situation? Make it more interesting? More engaging?
Using Mixed Reality to Create Places, from a Standing Start Another reason why I wanted to sprinkle some mixed reality around the neighborhood: all those futuristic technologies I've been talking about -- AR, VR, IoT -- are still trying to claw their way out of the vaporware swamp. So it's a legitimate question: Is this all BS or what?
The DIY and Maker Promise No experience necessary? I'm going to find out. I'm going to take the DIY and Maker movements at their word: "you can do this."
A tiny cloud-connected brain The best digital quarterback for this project? Probably something cheap enough to enable many tiny connected microcontrollers, which could be scattered around the city. So I chose this microcontroller (and wifi module) on a chip of non-conductive green fiberglass-epoxy laminate: a Particle Photon, created by Particle.io, a small startup based in Silicon Valley, California, USA, Planet Earth. They cost less than $20. each.
Dense: Physically and Electronically The Photon is chunky, and dense: physically and electronically. The base slab of this board is made from fiberglass and epoxy laminate. It's thick, non-conductive. Electricity is not going to skitter around this surface: it will follow the copper paths etched into the surface.
In the Cloud The importance of the cloud to the Particle became evident soon after my Photon arrived. A couple of young Particle engineers made a presentation at the hardware incubator Bolt, in Boston. As a few Particle Photon boards were passed around one participant posed an insightful question: "What's the dog and what's the tail?"
Best "Blink an LED" Experience It's the "hello world" of physical computing: blinking an LED. It's making the connection, seeing if it works. Rudimentary, yeah, but it brings together physical and digital computing in a vivid way. Here's the quickest path to that adventure.
Blink an LED... ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD! Because that's what makes it an IoT project: interacting with devices everywhere. That's where it gets interesting: set something in motion and things happen all over the place. That's where the cloud comes in. It's kind of a relay: you send your instructions there, and they bounce out to your devices.
Breadboards My primary sketchpad: a breadboard. My drawing instruments: jumper wires. The great thing about this combo: you can quickly sketch another idea if your first one doesn't work out.
Cambridge Hackspace A hackspace is necessary to tackle a mixed reality project. There are just too many unknown unknowns to try to go it alone. Fortunately for me, I had Cambridge Hackspace -- a cross between a hacker study hall, a workshop, and a local pub. Fortunately for all of us, there are now hundreds of these places around the world.
Placemaking Project #1: Move a Detour Flag An LED has been blinked. Software and hardware have come together. "Physical computing" has been achieved, albeit in a humble, entry-level way. Next: a humble placemaking project, ideally tuned to the Boston Detours concept. How about a cranky, hung-over construction flagman, the kind of guy who waves you past road-paving projects? That's the concept.
Servo A servo is a small motor-like device with a shaft. This shaft can be positioned by sending the servo a coded signal. The first time I tried to send a servo a signal, sitting at a long table in Cambridge Hackspace, a big guy working across from me raised his head. He sniffed loudly, dramatically. "Smells like failure," he said. "Something's burning."
Servo Code Once I started chatting with Gustavo Gonnet in the Particle Community boards, I began to improve my control of my balky servo. Things starting looking up for Detour Flag Guy. Gustavo enjoyed explaining how things worked. He added lavish comments to the code snippets he sent me. That's when the code started to make sense.
Serious about servos I still wasn't exactly sure why my Particle Photons were sometimes dying violently when I connected them to servos. Often the death was accompanied by a plume of electric smoke, a little whiff of scary. I went on the Particle community boards to try to figure it out.
Adanguevara I wasn't looking for bargains when I started searching for artists on Fiverr, "the marketplace for creative and digital services for entrepreneurs and small businesses." Even though the starting price does hover around $5. I just wanted something fast, convenient, and relatively frictionless. I wanted to get this process going. After a brisk search over lunch, I went with Adanguevara, a "Visual Artist / Architecture / Photographer" from Venezuela.
Make That Display Now I just have to translate the servo movement into a Detour Guy moving a flag. Next tech: Elmer's glue, foam board, and an X-acto knife. Next stop: Michael's. I have to remind myself: I'm not working on a Science Fair project. I'm prototyping.
Servo Success The Detour Guy is moving his flag, whenever I send the signal, from wherever I happen to be: home, work, Hackspace. The Cloud bounces the signal down to him. So I captured him on YouTube, and as an animated GIF.
A Lucky Break: The Taza Chocolate Bar My goal was a location in the real world: an IoT outpost in the colder, harsher world beyond Cambridge Hackspace. And I scored an early lucky break -- a spot on a counter in the Taza Chocolate Bar.
Connectivity on Location: My Options Now I just had to find a way to enable passersby to connect to the Taza display via their phones. My starting assumption was that people would want to do this. Makes sense, right? So many people are clearly obsessed with their phones: heads tilted down, thumbs flicking screens, always. So it was safe to assume that given the chance many people would want to use these favored devices to extend some control over the nearby environment: make a Detour Guy move his flag, for example.
Beacons Estimote Beacons are the coolest connectivity kids on the block. Powered by Bluetooth LE, these brightly colored, nubby plastic radios tap a protocol backed by Apple (iBeacon) to target stylish, retail-oriented companies and customers.
NFC Near Field Communication (NFC) is solid, industrial connectivity technology, but it was late to the iPhone. Sure it powered Apple Pay, but for a long time that was all. Apple didn't allow other apps to use it. Apple wanted to stack the deck in favor of iBeacon technology. Then in late 2017, around the time I was evaluating my connectivity options, Apple relented and enabled NFC on the iPhone. It was still playing catch-up with the cool kids, but I liked it enough to add it to my console.
QR QR codes. Big in Japan, and China, right? But lame in the US. Or, maybe, QR codes have been a tech tortoise: advancing slowly, improving slightly, getting a tiny bit more popular every year? That would match my experience. I found QR (for "Quick Response") technology to be the most solid, dependable connectivity tech out there.
Snapcodes Once I got going with plain, ordinary QR codes, I decided to consider some social versions, starting with Snapchat's Snapcodes. TechCrunch thought they might fill a niche. They didn't, for me anyway. I displayed a Snapcode sticker on the console for awhile. No one used it.
Facebook Messenger After Snapchat revisited QR codes, Facebook (naturally) also jumped on the QR code bandwagon, in a half-hearted manner. I had difficulty getting these to work.
Javascript How to bridge the gap between a visitor's phone and the Particle Cloud (which controls the display): Javascript.
A Game... with Prizes! Now for some incentives, some game-making reasons why someone would want to engage. I quickly assembled some "Fun Paks:" miscellaneous collections of ephemera that were primarily, although not exclusively, inspired by Boston history. The idea was to add something to win if you managed to move the Detour flag dude with your phone.
Up and Running at the Taza Chocolate Bar It took two very large rubber bands (to hold the console to the rest of the display), and a wrought iron tabletop picture stand from Michael's, and a few strategically placed patches of masking tape, but Detour Guy is now live at Taza. Here are a few hastily-shot pictures from my phone.
A Taza Chocolate Bar Customization Not long after the display launched, Christine, the manager of the Taza Chocolate Bar, made a suggestion. I always listened to Christine, because she radiated a quiet, no-nonsense practicality. She would listen to my futuristic ramblings, deftly insert a question or suggestion, listen some more, then maybe add a few more suggestions. Most of the time, her ideas bumped the project up a notch.
A Continuous Rotation Servo If the granite grinding stone is going to spin, I need a "continuous rotation" servo. I ordered one from Adafruit. Unlike the servo driving my Detour Guy's flag, this one will go around in circles.
Taza 2.0 A paper picture of a Taza granite grinding stone is spinning now. For 5 seconds, once it's been triggered. The circular disc also syncs with the Taza chocolate pucks next door. Lots of circles. Confidence is high. Here are some pictures.
Why? Connectivity. As the hours started to add up on this project, I started asking myself why it felt worth it. The answer for me: connectivity. The appeal of linking things: devices to the Internet, blinking lights to the the cloud, one person to other people, people to a location. That's what's exciting about the Internet, hypertext, smartphones, and the Internet of Things, over-hyped as that phrase is. Connectivity is the satisfying payoff. Or at least it used to, before the social networks started turning sour.
More on Hypertext, and the IoT Ted Nelson is generally credited with inventing the term "hypertext" in a 1965 paper for the Association for Computing Machinery. I once heard Nelson make a presentation to a conference in California. I remember his lecture as... rambling. Ironically, his talk was bedeviled by digressions and tangents. It was only much later that I found a passage where Nelson succinctly described hypertext as "non-sequential writing - text that branches and allows choices to the reader... a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways."
Not Working The first time I stopped by to check on the Taza interactive display, two college-age kids were playing with their phones next to the counter. They said they were from MIT. After a few minutes, the paper granite stone spun, and they high-fived each other. This gave me a sense of hope. A false sense of hope. Because barely anyone else engaged with the device over the next few weeks.
A Smartphone Reality Check The lack of interest surprised me. The Public Market was clogged with people obsessively checking their phones, taking selfies, posting Instagram pictures. But no one, apparently, wanted to engage with an interactive display that challenged them to push their smartphone capabilities -- even a little bit -- to tap their phone's built-in bluetooth, NFC, or location awareness. Desperate for insights, I set up my venerable Detour Flag Guy display at the Cambridge Hackspace on a few successive Tuesday nights, when visitors are attracted by the "Open Project Night" designation.
Competing with (and Losing to) Horchatas and Churros It was late afternoon when I stopped by the Taza Chocolate Bar. I was surprised to discover a line, at least 20 people long, and an air of excitement. The Taza staff was working furiously to stay ahead of the demand. The reason: Taza had posted an event on Facebook promoting a "limited batch of iced chocolate horchata and churros." Taza fans, patiently waiting for their horchatas, did not notice the interactive display just inches from their elbows. Visions of horchatas and churros were dancing in their heads.
Season One Recap: What You Can Expect in 10 Pictures If you walk through your city frequently, and you witness widespread torpidity among visitors, you may also decide to tap "mixed reality" -- the intersection of augmented reality, virtual reality, and the internet of things -- to make some of the local sites more engaging, informative, interesting. Here's how that project might evolve, if your experience is like mine.
Placemaking Report
