Sifteo Virtual Chemestry Lab

Brief explanation about the Virtual Chemestry Lab using Sifteos

On this video we talk a little bit about how this project started and somethings that have been happening to it until now.

A brief explanation about Sifteo Chemistry Virtual Lab Project from Moleque de Ideias on Vimeo.

You can find our code at github

We discuss everything on a open facebook group

Our milestone releases presentations is in our vimeo channel.

The presentation of the project at "Festical de ideias"(Ideas Festival).

The photo album of the first real experiments.

The photo album of the first pH experiences and design studies.

The elf file.

If you don't wat to watch the video here is what we talked about:

Why siftteos?

We noticed that every virtual lab was SUPER boring, with no real interaction between people and chemistry. Sifetos was awesome because we could literraly move things around like "real life" but with power-ups.

Our idea was to make an full chemistry lab where people could do any experiment using different substances and instruments.

We imagine that we could have 1 sifteo for substances, 1 for recipients like becher or erlenmeyer and several for instruments like pH meter, bunsen burner, refrigerator coil, and stuff like this. So we can combine them togheter and make like a super chemistry lab in you house. 

Our first prototype was a very simple experiment using the old sifteos. We had 1 becher sifteo, 1 substance sifteo, 1 bunsen burner sifteo and 1 monitor sifteo.

The goal was to mix the substances by put them together at the becher sifteo and then shake it to mix the substance. But there was a catch, two of the substances only react if the temperature is higher than a specific value, so you have to use the bunsen burner sifteo to do that and monitor the temperature at the monitor sifteo. We have some footage of this. 

In order do start the idea we had to begin from somewhere, so we did a day with real experiments and real kids to see whats is the best way to begin and to have ideas about possible designs. We took a lot of pictures to document this awesome day. At the end we figured out that colors would be great to use.

So our first version was focused in pH metering.

Meanwhile we've been selected as one of the keynoters of "festival de ideias", in english, ideas festival. A 2 days festival where we had the opportunity to show to hundreds of people our demo. There we received a lot feedback and also commercial inquiries.

Not very long after this, Sifteo announced the new generation. So we had to start from scratch. This time focusing more on the graphics engine. As you can see in our new demo we just implemented some of animations and the backend to move substances from the substance sifteo to the bencher sifteo using the pipette sifteo.

Our code is on github

Our goal is to finish the pH experiment to start calling back those commercial inquiries we had at ideas festival so would be great to have more support from Sifteo staff.