Paper Playground v1.0.0

Paper Playground v1.0.0 Release

Paper Playground is an open-source project for collaboratively creating multimodal web experiences by means of mapping code to real pieces of paper and manipulating the code in your physical space. Everything runs on your machine and you can collaborate locally or using a hosting service to collaborate over projects with others in your shared space.

Paper Playground is based on the Paper Programs open-source project and has been extended to incorporate SceneryStack, the web development stack used by PhET Interactive Simulations as a robust 2D scene renderer and support for multimodal features.

Paper Playground is intended to enable quick prototyping of web projects based in JavaScript through physical, spatial movement of real pieces of paper. We are developing with a particular emphasis on simplifying adding multimodal display such as audio features (like sounds and sonifications), spoken description (via Text-To-Speech), and other non-visual features that are often difficult to design and develop alongside visual elements in complex web projects. Learn more on the Multimodal Codesign page.

v1.0.0 Feature Notes

• Creator: JavaScript Code Abstraction Interface for the SceneryStack web framework. Includes support for changing the assigned program number to your paper so you don't have to print out 800 papers!
  • Support for adding img/gif files to the platform
  • Support for adding sound files to the platform
  • Support for paper program templates.
  • Support for project organization within spaces.
  • Support for Custom code (when you really need to add some advanced functionality for JavaScript)
  • Abstractions for all Paper Events (move, rotate, whisker (overlap), add/remove, marker addition/move/remove, etc)
• New Display: SceneryStack based display to show the results of your code, project onto a surface, and more! Includes controls for how much a paper can move before it is detected as movement to smooth out jittery detection.
• Camera Selection: Choose which camera device connected to your computer is used for the Camera interface
  • Exposed detection parameters to fine-tune your paper dot detection.
• Microcontroller Communication over Bluetooth (Micro:bit and Arduino): Check out the Microcontroller Integration page to learn more about how you can communicate with microcontrollers over Bluetooth, expanding the already near infinite capabilities of Paper Playground to enhance the tangible possibilities. You can create a hybrid tangible interface using paper-based events (paper movement, paper size, markers, paper overlap, etc) from Paper Playground, while triggering actuators connected to your microcontroller. Or, vice versa... take in sensor signals from your microcontroller, pipe a message to Paper Playground, and trigger animations, sounds, speech, and anything else you can do on the web using Paper Playground! Includes several Instructables projects with walkthroughs.
• Revamped installation, tutorial, and interface overview documentation.
• Demo projects and templates pre-populated in Creator interface.
• Package installation (this post!) - no more command-line expertise needed (does require Node.js installed as dependency).
• And more!

Join us!

Paper Playground is open to contribution of all forms, from code to documentation to design. We welcome you to join our community and help us build a tool that supports a wide range of users in creating interactive hybrid web experiences.

🌍 Join the Community 🌍