Oracle of NumPy

Online the interactions we have with each other are very deliberate and premeditated. From the polished digital profiles we wear for ourselves, we send volleys of considered messages back and forth to one another. I think and then I respond to you. You think and then respond to me in turn. There is little room for instinct or the unexpected in our interactions online.

Indeed, we are our most authentic and spontaneous selves online when we are privately browsing on our own, flitting from link to link. To capture the serendipity of real life in our very deliberate online interactions, the Oracle comes to life and gifts you a postcard of your true face whenever you land on the same site as someone you know, pulling uncertainty into the otherwise certain.

Summer 2020

Technical Design:

Users login to the Oracle of NumPy Chrome extension on their browser using Facebook
Facebook API is used to get a list of user friends who also use Oracle of NumPy
Chrome extension interfaces with Firebase database that tracks the current tab each user is currently browsing on
Chrome Extension background script scrapes all links on page when the user visits a page, follows those links and scrapes all links on each of the resulting pages.
All of these links are cross-referenced with the pages each of the user's friends are on according to the Firebase database
If the user is within 1 click of a link from being on the same web domain as one of their friends, the user will receive a notification
If the user lands on the same web domain as one of the friends, an HTTP POST request is sent to a python server running on each user's computer
Python server then accesses the user's webcam, takes a picture of the user, makes the picture a black and white image, and superimposes a border on the image to make it look like a postcard
Python script converts the resulting image to a bitmap array and streams that array over Serial USB connection to the Oracle of NumPy sculpture
The sculpture begins to light up and whir with LEDs and servos as a radio tunes into the local NPR station and the bitmap array is printed out on receipt paper
The sculpture is controlled by an ESP32 module connected to a thermal printer, an Si4703 radio module, neopixel LEDs and SG90 servos
The Si4703 radio output is passed through an LM386 op-amp audio amplifier connected to a speaker

Oracle of NumPy

Technical Design:

Github