User:Grrrreat/prototyping/pokingmachine

"In a parody turned technical, artists Jasper van Loenen and Bartholomäus Traubeck developed the Poking Machine, a wearable device that physically pokes a person whenever a friend virtually pokes them on Facebook."

- Natalie Dixon for Mail&Guardian

Online social networks are platforms for communication, enabling us to connect anywhere we go. However, they still lack the mediation of physical communication. Facebook tries to improve this by enabling its users to ‘poke’ each other, which basically only sends another written message to the person you poke, without conveying the original intent of the poking gesture. The Poking machine converts the message into an actual physical poke, extending the reach of this haptic gesture indefinitely. This way users can connect not only virtually but also physically.

The object itself is a small but still bulky block of shiny fluorescent plastic sitting on the user's arm affixed by elastic strings.

The technical set-up consists of a custom built circuit (ATtiny, servo, 9V battery, and bluetooth module) that connects to an Android phone, letting it keep track of incoming pokes. The circuit is housed in a laser-cut box you can wear on your arm. The code on the Android phone is done in Processing for Android. It parses the pokes and sends a serial 'poke' signal to the ATtiny which is sporting only a mere 4kb of memory for the code needed for bluetooth connectivity and a compressed servo-library plus the few extra lines for the poking action as answer to the serial command sent from the Android phone.