Objects in Flux |

Cylindric Ultrasonic Bat Detector

By scott | April 10th, 2005

African heart-nosed bats can hear the footsteps of a beetle walking on sand from a distance of more than six feet. – [Amazing Bat Trivia]

That’s really got nothing to do with echolocation (the sonar system used by bats) or the device I’m about to describe, but it’s a pretty stunning piece of trivia.

Bat’s are fascinating creatures and here in Melbourne they are a common sight. At dusk streams of grey-headed flying foxes leave their camp in the Royal Botanical Gardens to plunder fruit and nectar from suburban flowering gums. The number of urban bats have swelled in recent years, giving the impression that the grey-headed flying fox is thriving, but in reality Australia’s bat population has decreased by 30% over the past decade. The increase in urban bat colonies is the result of ongoing destruction to the bats native feeding grounds. The Melbourne Royal Botanical Gardens is now the only breeding colony of grey-headed flying foxes in the state of Victoria. In 2001 the Royal Botanical Gardens started shooting these animals in an insane attempt to curb the local bat population. Thanks to public outcry and a dedicated group of protesters this practice was stopped. The grey-headed flying fox has since been classified as a vulnerable species by the Australian government.

I was once passed by a grey-headed flying fox while travelling down a deserted Punt Road at 2 am. The bat had a wingspan of about a metre, it was a mesmerising and beautiful experience. Yes, I’m quite a fan of this fellow mammal, however I’m not so obsessed that I go out at night with the specific intent of tracking them down; or at least I wasn’t until I discovered there was such a thing as a bat detector.

A bat detector is an instrument that will detect the presence of bats by tuning into the echolocation ultrasounds they produce. There are a variety of commercial bat detectors available but what excited me were the numerous internet sites with home-built detector circuits. I stumbled across these sites while trying to decide what to do with a 1968 Braun Cylindric T2 cigarette lighter. What resulted was the Cylindric Ultrasonic Bat Detector.

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No Comment

By scott | March 20th, 2005

Oh My God! All my comments have disappeared!
I think my blog host has been a little over zealous with his attack on comment spam.

I’ve tried to restore the comments but unfortunately some have been lost forever.

I enjoy the comments, I value them, I want more of them. If one of your comments has disappeared you have NOT been censored by me. Please re-post it.

[Turns out we had some comment spam links to hard core pornography – and site admins can be held legally responsible. My site was clean but RMIT freaked and everything went out with the babes and bath water. The up-side is they’ve given me my own ftp site so now I have total control and it gives me the opportunity to try out WordPress. If you’re reading this then you’ve found my new site. I’ll be keeping the old site up until I get the traffic diverted.]

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Home made Pokia

By scott | February 20th, 2005

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a retro-mobile phone for my friend Tim’s birthday. (I couldn’t find any – I wonder were they all went?) During my search I came across the Pokia phenomenon (not to be confused with the Pocky phenomenon, a delicious chocolatey snack – if you know what I’m talking about why not find out what flavour Pocky you are). Pokia involves the retro-fitting of old telephone handsets to mobile phones. The home of this activity is naturally www.pokia.com. From here you can purchase a wide selection of handsets modded by Nik Roope but there are also other sources of Pokia paraphernalia and a search on eBay will generally turn up a number of items. I decided that (in the absence of a retro-mobile) a Pokia would make a perfect present. With only a few days before Tim’s birthday and no sign of any local suppliers I decided to make my own.

Building a Pokia is extremely straight forward; 1. get a hands free kit for your mobile, 2. put it inside the handset of an old phone. That’s it!

Of-course, if your going to do this yourself then you might want some details, so here they are:
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The Lamp – Parabolic Microphone

By scott | January 25th, 2005

The FIX project officially finished in June but I’ve still got some FIX requests hanging around my studio (luckily this was a free service and no-one seems to mind). For 6 months thoughts of these requests have been sitting in the back of my head nagging away; “isn’t it about time you did something about…” – enough already. I decided to use the Christmas break to tackle the most annoying one.

Here it is. A “Planet Lamp” that was listed as an “Ugly Lamp” on the FIX request form.

I decided to turn it into a parabolic microphone.
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RetroPod meets the Sony hard line

By scott | January 23rd, 2005

In a previous post I discussed the producer / consumer struggle taking place within the construction of object identity. In another example of this struggle, John Young – maker of the retroPod, has joined the (not so exclusive) list of recipients of a Sony “cease and desist” order.

John has been shoehorning iPods into the shells of old Sony Walkman’s. The result is the “retroPod”, a tough, “mostly waterproof” and so right now (like only the 80’s can be) iPod case. You can follow the design development of the retroPod here.

Having developed an impressively simple modification process with a high quality finish John launched www.retroPod.com and put the retroPod on sale. 6 weeks latter he was forced to shut down the storefront under pressure from Sony. An exert from Sony’s letter appears on the retroPod site. In the letter Sony makes the rather bizarre claim that consumers will be misled by the retroPod “into thinking that Sony is backward in its design of products”. Do Sony seriously believe this, or is it simply a convenient claim designed to add weight to their legal action?

For me the retroPod has little impact on my understanding of Sony’s current design profile, but rather acts to further cement the Sony Walkman as a design icon. Considering Sony’s continued use of the “Walkman” trademark in their new Digital Music Player the Network Walkman you could argue that the historicising effect of the retroPod would be commercially productive for Sony. But it’s probably easier to understand Sony’s action as part of a strategy to distance itself from the Apple iPod at a time (September 2004) when they were trying to establish a market for their newly released Network Walkman (and strong-arming consumers into using their own DRM format ATRAC3).

Sony has since relaxed its stance on the ATRAC3 format and a recent article at engadget suggests Sony is beginning to soften in its hardline approach to consumer standards control. In light of this and the surprise appearance of Sony president Kunitake Ando during Steve Job’s keynote at Macworld this year, perhaps Sony’s attitude to the retroPod has changed in the past 6 months? Would the new, friendly Sony tolerate a small niche designer with a low volume handmade vintage product? – I doubt it.

(Pics courtesy of John Young and thanks to Denis for the retroPod link)

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