Skomer comes to London

Skomer

Skomer (named after puffin island off the coast of Pembrokeshire) arrived today.  Her mum's a Jack Russell and her dad's a Yorkshire terrier so we assume she'll keep the ubiquitous rats on their toes.

Probably a good squirrel chaser too...

Foot pedal button

We visited Skanda Vale again on Saturday to catch up with Valli.  Brother Stefan has been making her a hosepipe football - she's been having some fun with it, but only plays when there is someone else joining in.  She looks like a gigantic puppy.  http://www.skandavale.org/elephant-plays-football/

Foot pedal button

This time, we were testing a giant button made from an old sewing machine foot pedal. 

This would normally provide a variable output, but I simplified it to ON/OFF and we created a wooden housing that surrounded the case so that Valli wouldn't be able to grasp the button with her trunk, only push it.

The button was bolted to the fence across the balcony. 

Valli explores the button casing

Wire out the back (on the non-elephant side) connected Arduino to my laptop and activated  a Processing sketch that played a 1 second audio sample.

We tested a low rumble, didgeridoo, tuba, double-bass and contra-bassoon.

Valli seemed interested in exploring the shape and contours of the new button, but was reluctant to push it.  Brother Stefan thinks that an alternative embedded sensor that just requires touch will be more successful with acoustic stimulation.

CHI-Play 2015

Work in Progress presentation at CHI-Play 2015 - The ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play.

"Designing Interactive toys for Elephants"
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2810327&CFID=551862082&CFTOKEN=78821018