Building an interactive cardboard box to power a live presentation
Moving Brands was recently asked to speak at the Internet Age Media festival in Barcelona. Taking to the stage was Colin Burns, BBC’s Chief Design Officer of Design & Engineering and Darren Bowles, Moving Brands’ Executive Creative Director. We wanted to share the values that built a strong foundation for creative relationships, such as collaboration, craft, embracing the low-fi and being humble. To reflect these values and to deliver a theatrical and engaging talk, our small but nimble Research and Development team created a mini internet of things application made (almost entirely) from cardboard boxes.
The idea is simple: each box acts as a shortcut to a slide in a PowerPoint presentation. When a box is tapped, its corresponding slide would be displayed.
As these objects were to be used live — and had to make it to Barcelona from London (on a budget airline) — simplicity, transportability and reliability were key factors when designing them.
We suggest watching the video before reading further 😎
The Tech
The interactive boxes are brought to life using the Sparkfun Thing; each box contains one of these low-cost wifi modules connected to a battery and a 3-axis accelerometer to detect all sorts of physical input — from simple taps to shaking and throwing. Our current system consists of 12 boxes, a control box and an app.
When any of the boxes detects an input, it sends a message, via WiFi, to one of the three access points (also made from Sparkfun Things) within the control box. The control box then reads the message and decides whether to act as a keyboard to send key commands to the connected laptop (to control apps like PowerPoint) or serial commands (for more bespoke applications).
The system is flexible enough that you can add all types of sensors to the boxes and even use your phone or tablet as an input — it’s a great way to make fun IoT prototypes incredibly quickly.
