What is Peom Bean?
The Poem Bean is a silly little gadget communicating in an oldschool way with Morse code.
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It is blessed with a poetic soul and has an eager thirst for knowledge. Like a tiny new media hero, it carries a modern-day message in a bottle, spreading good-luck and charm to every Bean-holder. You can store a poem or any personal message in your bean. Push the Bean’s belly so that the LED eye starts blinking the encoded poem or the (secret) message in Morse code. If you know Morse code, just read out the hidden message. If you are unfamiliar with Morse code, visit the Bean’s website, www.versbab.kibu.hu. There you will find a bean-translating application which helps you to decode the Bean easily or to teach it a new poem/message.
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reading the bean - quick reading the bean - slow bean-learning bean-to-bean teaching stop
The Bean has two eyes; the lightreading eye and the blinking eye. The Bean uses the “lightreading eye” for learning messages and the “blinking eye” for communicating those. In order to: - find out the Bean’s message - teach a poem/message to the Bean
Photosensor of the Bean. It detects the light signs and translates them into Morse code.
LED eye. The Bean communicates by blinking the message in Morse code.
the easiest way is to use the Beanary application on www.versbab.kibu.hu. You don’t need to download or install anything, just follow the guidelines.
How does it work?
Lightreading eye
Blinking eye
You can control your Bean by clicking on it, which means pushing the Bean’s belly.
You can even hack it! Practically speaking the Bean-language means projecting and detecting light-signs based on the universal Morse code.
You can read out the hidden message with the help of a webcam, on www.versbab.kibu.hu.
Beans can share their knowledge when one is in learning mode and the other one is in bean-teaching mode.
The Bean’s tiny silicon body hides all the electronics, which are assembled in a most simple way. A 3 V-battery gives life to the LED and to the photosensor.
What’s inside?
The Bean is simple but smart. It has a chip brain and is able to memorize any text format until 3000 characters.
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And it is a little bit lazy, too. When you want to teach a new poem to the Bean, that will overwrite the previous one, so that the Bean delivers only one message at one time. When not learning or reciting poems, the Bean falls asleep, so it consumes only 3 QA. The average lifetime of a Bean is about 3-7 years, depending on the frequency of use.
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It all started with the “friday’s hacker challenge” at Kitchen Budapest, where every time someone made up a puzzle and the others had to solve it.
One of the researchers hacked the original program of the device and the challenge was to guess the riddle of the twinkling light. We worked out that the thermometer was blinking a Morse-coded poem, and after that enthusiasticly started to develop the idea.
The Bean Story
Last time the subject of the challenge was a thermometer used at goose-liver export (for monitoring the temperature-oscillation).
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Poem Bean is developed in Kitchen Budapest by Judit Boros, Lajos Tóth, Márton András Juhász, Zoltán Csík-Kovács, Krisztián Gergely. Copyrights are owned together by the researchers and Kitchen Budapest.