Project 2

Our second project we're tasked with getting two boards to communicate serially (or the board and the computer, but where's the fun in that).  Either way, the board has to communicate through the serial port and then react in some way using LEDs.  My idea involves fostering communication and cooperation.  Or the opposite, competition is fun, too.  Anyways, in ideal form this project would involve two rooms with two different LED art installations.  These would be interactive, but not in the way people would expect.  They change based on the noise level in the adjacent room.  If it's loud, the picture grows and flows, if it's quiet, the picture is more muted and calm.  This would encourage people to run from room to room trying to see each display.

In model form, I would connect my led sound meter (the bar of lights) to my arduino and depending on how many !'s I typed into the serial port would be how much the bar lights up.

On second thought, I think a jungle that people could walk through would be even more awesome, made of lights, of course.  Think Avatar.  Or in a much less crazy CG way, think these lights from apartmenttherapy.com: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/magnificent-high-tech-led-bouq-101115.  Of course, they would still "grow" based on the noise in the next room.

This also conjures up a sort of natural prisoner's dilemna.  Assuming the rooms are separated enough, the only way for each of the people to see all the pretty lights would be for them to be quiet, but having no way of making sure the other person stays quiet, you must make the effort of not making noise.  Of course, when the pretty lights come on, I like to think people would make lots of "oohs" and "ahhs" which would then incentivize the other room's people to be loud in retaliation.  Oh, I love anonymous competition like this.

As an addendum to this, I think I would make the forest/jungle uglier and angrier (i.e. redder and darker) with louder sounds, and eh... this is a lousy idea.