MD Lewis ITP Work

Mr. Potato Head Media Controller

For our mid-term we were asked to work in groups and create a media controller; a physical device that controls any medium in real-time so that the user can change their actions and see changes as they affect the medium. Our team started with the idea of controlling images of faces in a puzzle or divided in some form… as a media controller we thought it would be interesting to use Mr. Potato Head.

We considered using several different switches (fixed, variable) before settling on a simple Lever Switch. We mounted the switches inside Mr. Potato Head using super glue in the position of the 4 areas where we wanted to change on the monitor. The images were separated in Photoshop and placed into a file. The processing code took some work to develop but was pretty straightforward given our choice of a simple switch with on/off state; choosing random images.

Some questions emerged from this discussion… including: can we bring a decades old yet still popular toy into the 21st Century without losing its character? And, what other toys, games or items could possibly have the same utility?

During the process we took things one step at a time, the first being to get processing to randomly select the images; the switches were programmed in Arduino… a final hurdle occurred when we woke up the day of our presentation to find out that we used too much super glue… that the switches were stuck and wouldn’t go to their on/off state… we used large pliers to remove the stuck switches and had enough time to allow the other switches to set.

In this case using Mr. Potato Head to change affect facial images on the computer is very instinctive to the end user… we were also able to keep and possibly extend what’s ultimately fun about this decades old toy that continues to be popular.