Fonie is the result of one week workshop on physical computing. We have been asked to hack existing objects connecting them through an Arduino Yùn.

It uses the Arduino board to control the hair dryer motor and take pictures through a USB webcam.

The pictures are then combined into a GIF and uploaded to fonie.net through their API.

Fonie has been exhibited at the 2014 Maker Faire in Rome where over 150 people used it and a number of TV channels and media outlets covered it, including TG5, Vanity Fair, La Repubblica.

Fonie

The hairdryer that takes animated selfies

Fonie is a hairdryer that takes pictures while blowing air and automatically upload them to the web in form of a gif. It is a reflection on the direction that the “Internet of Things” trend is taking and a nod to the selfie phenomenon.

I have been involved in the re-design of the hacked hairdryer, in the building of the electronic circuit boards and in the programming of part of the code.