Message in a Bottle
Message in a Bottle
As an exercise in physical computing, we created a wireless email notification device in the form of a wine bottle. All interaction is done physically and there are no buttons. The concept was to limit our compulsion to obsessively check the computer for new messages while also bringing characteristics of postal mail to the digital world.
Background
Message in a Bottle was built during a two week physical computing workshop led by Massimo Banzi and Gwendolyn Floyd. Through ambient lighting, this wine bottle will display the amount of new emails from a set of specific contacts (i.e. friends from back home) which are defined in the user’s email client. Picking up the bottle will activate an LCD screen with a summary of the most recent message. Turning the bottle upside-down will delete this message from the bottle and load the next one. Once all messages have been read, the LCD screen and ambient light will shut off until new messages are received.
A key learning from this project was prototyping with smoke-and-mirror techniques. Although the physical interactions with the bottle were fully functional (using Arduino, accelerometers and an LCD screen), the ability to receive emails was never developed. However we still needed to prototype the full experience for an exhibition setting. We accomplished this by building a wireless remote control (a second Arduino, networked with XBee) that could send fake emails to the bottle at any time.
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Team members
Alice Pintus
Ujjval Panchal
Personal contribution
Concept development, electronics, programming