Unterkaerntner Nachrichten Artikel:

Die Maturanten der HTL Wolfsberg, Bernhard Heine und Markus Dohr, haben sich in ihrer Diplomarbeit mit dem Thema Stroboskop-Phänomene auseinandergesetzt und ein Lichtblitzgerät gebaut, mit dem man Tropfen „einfrieren“ kann. Dieser so genannte „Piddler“ ist seit einiger Zeit in North Carolina (USA) im Hickory Museum oft Art zu bestaunen.

Bernhard Heine und Markus Dohr haben es sich zur Aufgabe gemacht, einen so genannten „Piddler“ zu bauen, wobei der eine den elektrotechnischen Teil übernahm und der andere für die Software verantwortlich war.

Die Diplomarbeit der beiden begleiteten die HTL-Professoren DI Dr. Helmut Hebenstreit und Dipl.-Päd. Ing. Harald Weilguni. Heine und Dohr erhielten aber auch Unterstützung aus Übersee: DI Daniel Pressl war mit den beiden Maturanten ständig in E-Mail-Kontakt und gab ihnen wertvolle Tipps, die zum Gelingen des Projektes beitrugen.

Noch bevor die in Englisch verfasste Diplomarbeit von Bernhard Heine und Markus Dohr fertiggeschrieben war, hatte ihre Maturaarbeit bereits einen interessanten Verwendungszweck: Daniel Pressl machte es nämlich möglich, dass die HTL-Schüler den von ihnen entwickelten „Piddler“ im Hickory Museum of Art ausstellen dürfen. Mit ihrem Stroboskop (Lichtblitzgerät) und den anderen Hard- und Softwareteilen im Gepäck flogen die beiden im heurigen Frühjahr über Einladung von DI Pressl nach Boston, wo sie am MIT-Campus ihren „Piddler“ zusammenbauten. Diesen brachten sie anschließend in einer zwölfstündigen Jeep-Fahrt ins Hickory Museum of Art (North Carolina).

Die Wolfsberger HTL-Schüler waren dort bei der offiziellen Eröffnung der Hochgeschwindigkeitsfotografie-Ausstellung anwesend und stellten gemeinsam mit DI Pressl ihr Stroboskop-Objekt vor, mit dem ein Wasserstrahl durch Lichtblitze optisch in Tropfen zerlegt werden kann. Der „Piddler“ ist im Hickory-Museum ebenso ein vielbeachtetes Ausstellungsstück, wie Hochgeschwindigkeitsfotos, die DI Daniel Pressl zur Verfügung gestellt hat. Zehn Tage lang waren Bernhard Heine und Markus Dohr in den USA, ehe sie wieder in ihre Heimat zurückkehrten und fleißig für die Matura lernten, die sie mittlerweile erfolgreich hinter sich gebracht haben.

Unterkaerntner Nachrichten

It has been two weeks since I wrote my last blog, I cant believe it! The last week flew by! 4 days of last week almost seemed like one day!

Tuesday morning I flew to California, where I visited the Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) from Volkswagen of America! There is a 3 hour time difference between Boston and California. The next day I spent the entire day at the lab and met with all project leaders and all engineers of the entire lab. The ERL and Palo Alto were great places to see! - more to come on that!

Wednesday night, I flew back to Boston on a so-called "Red-Eye" flight, departing at 11pm and arriving in Boston at 8am on

Thursday. This day also my 15 OLPC laptops arrived! They are amazing - again, more to come on that, as well! Same day, I packed all my things and flew to Austria at 7:45pm.

Gladly, I finally arrived in Graz on Friday, at 2pm, having spent the past two nights in planes instead of a bed.

Since then, time has flown again and today is already Tuesday and I am now in Eisenstadt, close to Vienna, where I met with INITS yesterday. Furthermore, I visited ICEP and listend to the talk by Damian von Stauffenberg von MicroRate zu "Kapitalmarkt und Mikrofinanz-Sektor - Trends, Chancen und Perspektiven fuer Kommerzbanken" - more on that, as well! ;_)

Other things to come:

I took another INvenTERVIEW, with David Merill, from the Media Lab, at MIT, who I collaborated with on his PhD thesis working on Siftables, throught this years i-teams class - soon to be posted on this blog! ;_)

Again, I got some cool links for you that I came across, over the past weeks:

Control your PC with your Voice
on the same topic: Use your Voice to Power Microsoft Word

Trying to sublet my apartment I came across the following:

20 Unusually Brilliant Bookcase and Bookshelf Designs
Apartment Therapy

Other:

A List Apart
Tag Galaxy
and for all of you, who like listening to OE3’s Fruehstueck bei mir and many more: Podster

PS:
The OST* featured a short paragraph about me and the 2fast4u exhibition in Hickory, North Carolina.
* TheOffice of Science & Technology (OST) is  "Building bridges of knowledge and expertise between Austria and North America" - this is the mission of the OST at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, DC. The OST is the strategic interface in the sciences, research, and research policy between Austria and North America.

In the next weeks my students and I will show you, how to build your own Multi-Flash. Here, a great example of a multi-flash photograph (Harold E. Edgerton):

Tennis Player

The famous "Piddler" also relies on a built-in strobe!

STROBE KIT – Intro

Components:

· Printer board

· 3 potentiometers

· 1 LCD

· 1 switch

· 1 taster

· 1 power connector

All these things are located in a black case. Furthermore you need at least one LED-panel and of course a power supply.

LCD: displays the time between the flashes.

1: Potentiometer, which allows you to change the display brightness.

2: Potentiometer, which allows you to change the length of each flash (duty cycle).

3: Potentiometer, which allows you to change the time between the flashes.

LED PANELS

Each LED-Panel consists of ten LEDs. You can connect a maximum of four LED-Panels.

More to come in the following weeks!

The Strobe-Kit project is a collaboration between 2fast4u (iPressl) and the HTL Wolfsberg.

We are off to North Carolina to present the piddler to the Hickory Museum of Art for the opening of their High-Speed Photography exhibition (details will follow).

We are so proud!

The Team (from left to right: Bernhard Heine, DI Daniel Pressl and Markus Dohr).

Links:

2fast4u
HTL Wolfsberg
Piddler

WHAT’S BEHIND THE BALLOON BOX PROJECT??

Enter the CUBE

The person has to stand on the marked point on the floor and switches off the light with his foot. After a few seconds, a lamp inside shows, that the balloon can be punctured now. The person has to puncture the balloon within 4 seconds. When the „info-light“ is on, the shutter of the camera opens, when the „info-light“ is off, the shutter closes.

The person now punctures the balloon, which sound sets of the sound-trigger, sending a signal to the flash, which illuminates the scene for a split-second!

After the shutter is closed, the lights in the balloon box goes on and the taken photograph appears on the computer screen, on the outside of the balloon box. This photograph will be saved immediately to the data-base. Now, the user can decide to take another high-speed photograph or email or print the picture for him/her to keep!

Gerhard Seifried, Mayor of Wolfsberg in Austria

Criteria to be fulfilled

• Picture has to be taken
  
  
  • the noise releases the flash
  • the picture will be saved in the data base

• finish software
  
  
  • restricted surroundings
  • people cannot work outside the software

Desired criteria

• light quality
• picture quality
• all taken pictures will be shown as a screen saver

Conveniences

PCIMCA Card

Visual Studio C# 2003

Windows XP SP2

Internet Explorer

Internet Connection

Balloon Box Computer:

We have to write all the software for the project and here is a little base plan of the functionalities:

Person goes to the computer terminal.

He/She sees the starting screen.

Presses on the Button and arrives at the log-in menu.

The person enters their data:

First name, surname , e-mail address are entered

After pressing the Submit-button, a video is playing.

It will explain the person the handling inside the box.

“Stay on the red dot on the ground…”

“… if the blue light switch on, please puncture the balloon…”

“Smile in the camera and say “cheese”…”

After the explanation the person goes into the box and takes the photo. Now the pictures is taken (see Enter the CUBE*).

The person walks out of the box and back to the terminal.

On the screen the person can see the picture.

Now the person can choose:

print the picture

send it to me per e-mail

take picture once again

At the end, the person returns to the start screen.

About the makers of the Balloon-Box

Advisor Professor Helmut Hebenstreit

Team 2fast4u HTL
v.li.n.re.: Co-Advisor DI Daniel Pressl, Bernhard Heine und Markus Dohr (Projekt Piddler), Andreas Maier und Stefan Leopold (Projekt Balloon-Box)

I am advising 4 HTL Wolfsberg students through the course of their High-School thesis. In pairs of two, they will be working on and optimizing two popular objects that were already built for this years HighSpeedPhotography exhibition 2fast4u.

Students: Andreas Maier, Bernhard Heine, Leopold Stefan, Dohr Markus HTL-Wolfsberg

More news will be posted by the students soon…

The live streams have been an accompanying feature of MIT-Austria events, such as the 2fast4u High-Speed Photography exhibition, where visitors at the exhibition in Austria could communicate live with students at MIT.

The site at this time was www.redwired.org/tmp/2fast4u and we had 6 feeds running (meaning six cameras!) with 3 booths, where the users could also talk to each other and take snapshots of the different views of the cameras. Screenshots of the feed website can be found here.

At this time there are only two more feeds running: One at MIT, in building 4 in the basement, looking out the windows. The other one sits on a table on the 3rd floor in the Stiftsgymnasium St. Paul in Austria, viewing a former project of the school. The little house can be remotley controlled over the web: