My personal view on living spaces is that, the single most important aspect (apart from keeping rain out, etc), is having a great view from your window.
Although the flat I live in now has a wonderful park-side view, it does lose its freshness after 3 years of living in the same place.
This is unfortunate, as most people cannot move houses every time they get bored of the view.
The "Moving Windows" project is an attempt to hack the view from your window, by dynamically projecting images onto your curtain.
The Setup
Put a wide-angle projector in your balcony.
The specs you require depend on the size of your window and balcony, but for most cases, wide-angle+brightness are two important features.
I used a BenQ MW814ST, which is fairly cheap, very wide-angle (can project a 95 inch screen from a distance of 1m), and very very bright (2500 lumens).
It is also highly critical that you do not simply leave the projector outside; build a rain proof casing, or bring the projector in after every use. I do the latter.
Then, connect the projector to your PC and close the curtains (which are, preferably, white).
Project things
Simply project images of woodland, the beach, underwater, or whatever, and the results are quite stunning.
The slight blurring of the images due to irregularities of the surface of the curtain, and shadows created by the window frames create a net-effect of making it seem as though you are looking through lace curtains to a different world outside your room:
Living in the mountains...
or by the sea...
or under the sea...
or in Caen...
or in orbit around the Earth.
The images don't necessarily have to be sceneries- you could also create shadows to make it seem as if people are on your balcony:
"They" are here.
In the video I posted above, I've also shown how you can simulate a thunder storm.
Todos
I should find a way to add blurring to give images a more realistic "looking through lace curtains" effect
I haven't really thought about viewing positions and the FOV/viewpoint of the images. Maybe I could use a camera+face recognition setup to dynamically change the view in the window? (like the experiment I did years ago here:
The effect of displaying shadows of people was unexpectedly very interesting (and scary). There are some things I'd like to experiment here, like interacting with shadow people (eg: "Chase off the Burglar!" game)
Conclusion
Very cheap and simple, fairly promising. Great way to brighten up a house party.
A while back, I published Tempescope, an ambient physical display that simulates weather inside a little box, to make knowing tomorrow's weather as easy as looking outside the window.
I have now redesigned and published a new, open source version here: http://tempescope.com
The major changes are:
the build only requires basic materials like acrylic boards and electrical components (apart from the water pump and mist diffuser)
the entire system is now self-contained inside the box (whereas before there was a separate shoe-box containing the circuits)
it takes roughly $80 to build (less than half the previous version which took $150)
The schematics and CAD diagrams, as well as the software are all available open sourced on the above website, and anyone is free to build Tempescope.
Instructions on building is also being updated daily, and we almost have complete coverage of the entire build flow.
Not too much has changed in terms of functionality.
A PC program reading weather forecasts from Wunderground controls Tempescope to simulate various kinds of weather including:
clouds,
rain and lightning,
and of course sunny weather.
You can also build all kinds of applications using the developer library, like programs that let you know the weather of whoever you're taking to on Skype!
and an acrylic casing (which you cut and build yourself)
I've received many e-mails after releasing the previous version asking how to build the previous Tempescope; please let me know if anyone builds the new, opensourced Tempescope!
