Group 1_Lover's Cups

Intention

The project is designed to bridge emotional and physical gaps for long-distance couples by fostering intimacy, connection, and joy through technology. Based on our research, common pain points faced by long-distance couples includes:

1. Couples miss physical touch, hugs, and shared physical experiences.

2. Feeling of disconnect or growing apart due to lack of shared activities and experiences.

3. Couples struggle to create shared memories or routines due to distance.

Motivation: Traditional tools often focus on verbal or visual communication, leaving a gap in physical and symbolic connections. This project explores how technology can humanize remote interactions, making them more emotionally fulfilling and interactive.

Primary goal: Enhance emotional connectivity, turning simple, everyday activities like drinking, kisses and warmth into meaningful shared rituals.

Success Metrics: The devices can accurately detect cup temperature and lip motion while seamlessly responding to varying LED light colors, ensuring precise environmental awareness and enhanced user interaction feedback.

HISTORICAL CASE

The Lover’s Cups, developed by the MIT Media Lab, reimagine long-distance communication by merging technology and emotional connection. These interconnected drinking interfaces foster intimacy by integrating actions like drinking, toasting, or shaking, creating a tangible sense of presence.

1. Missions: The project addresses challenges faced by long-distance couples, such as lack of physical intimacy, communication barriers, and the struggle to create shared experiences. By transforming a simple activity like drinking into a meaningful interaction, the cups provide a unique way for couples to feel connected.

2. Technical Features: The cups integrate LEDs, sensors, and RF wireless technology to detect and transmit actions in real time. Sip and liquid sensors capture drinking motions, while LEDs and vibration motors provide visual and tactile feedback. RF chips enable seamless pairing between cups, allowing synchronized interactions like toasting or shaking. The design’s thinness is achieved by embedding all components between two layers of acrylic, demonstrating cutting-edge information architecture.

3. Theoretical Framework: The Lover’s Cups embody affordance theory, offering physical actions that symbolize connection. They draw on symbolic interactionism, transforming drinking into a shared ritual, and leverage attachment theory, fostering consistent and meaningful interactions to maintain relational stability. The design process follows contextual design principles, ensuring the device directly addresses the needs of long-distance couples.

In summary, the Lover’s Cups are an innovative tool for fostering connection in remote relationships. By combining symbolic design, advanced technology, and user-centered principles, they demonstrate how mundane actions can become powerful gestures of intimacy.

PHASE I: REMAKING

Approach

The approach to rebuilding the Lover’s Cups focuses on mimicking the essential features of the original design while incorporating practical modifications for this stage of development. We have integrated temperature sensors to dynamically change the LED color, recreating the symbolic emotional feedback that was a core element of the original concept. This feature ensures that the device continues to foster a tangible sense of connection through visual cues.

To streamline functionality, we have replaced traditional motion sensors with a photoresistor, which serves as a motion detection mechanism on the cup. This adjustment simplifies the design without compromising the device's ability to capture and respond to user interactions effectively. The photoresistor allows us to detect changes in light or cover, translating subtle user actions into responsive feedback.

Additionally, we have opted to remove the RF feature in this phase of development, assuming that the connected particle system can later serve as the RF communication mechanism. This decision allows us to focus on refining the core interactive features while laying the groundwork for seamless device pairing and synchronization in subsequent stages.

These adjustments maintain the core functionality of the original Lover’s Cups while making the design more practical and scalable. By leveraging temperature sensors and photoresistors, the device preserves its interactive essence while reducing technical noise and complexity. The removal of RF in favor of future IoT capabilities ensures the design remains flexible and future-proof.

Process

The initial design phase aimed to replicate the essential features, such as temperature-based LED feedback and motion detection, while removing the RF communication module. The decision to ignore the RF functionality was driven by the Particle connectivity setup in the later stage.

In the first iteration, temperature sensors were implemented to change LED colors based on the liquid's warmth or coolness, allowing intuitive emotional feedback. The motion detection system was tackled next, replacing traditional sensors with photoresistors to detect light changes, simulating interactions like lifting or covering the cup. This approach offered simplicity and reliability, but adjustments were needed to ensure consistent detection of user actions.

Through this process, the Lover’s Cups retained their ability to convey emotional connections via temperature and motion feedback while simplifying their design for practical prototyping. These iterations demonstrated the importance of balancing functionality with usability, laying the groundwork for future development. The rebuild captures the essence of the original device while enhancing its practicality and scalability.

Prototype

The prototype of the Lover’s Cups rebuild focuses on preserving the original concept of fostering intimacy and interaction through shared drinking rituals. The redesigned device uses temperature sensors to detect liquid temperature, a photoresistor for motion sensing, and LED lights for visual feedback. These features provide symbolic and real-time interactions for remote users.

Bill of Materials:

1. Photoresister x1

2.RGB LED Ring x1

3. Temperature Sensor x1

4. Particle Photon 2 x1

Wiring Diagram:

1. Photoresistor pin to A0, needed 100 ohm for the ground side

2. Temperature Sensor pin to A1

3. Neopixel pin to MO

// This #include statement was automatically added by the Particle IDE.
#include <neopixel.h>

// Include Particle Device OS APIs
#include "Particle.h"
#include <neopixel.h>

#define PIXEL_PIN SPI // plug into pin MO
#define PIXEL_COUNT 12 // 0 addressed
//#define PIXEL_TYPE SK6812RGBW
#define PIXEL_TYPE WS2812

// Let Device OS manage the connection to the Particle Cloud
SYSTEM_MODE(AUTOMATIC);

// Show system, cloud connectivity, and application logs over USB
// View logs with CLI using 'particle serial monitor --follow'
SerialLogHandler logHandler(LOG_LEVEL_INFO);
Adafruit_NeoPixel strip = Adafruit_NeoPixel(PIXEL_COUNT, PIXEL_PIN, PIXEL_TYPE);

static int photoPin = A0;
static int tempPin = A1;


uint32_t w = strip.Color(0, 0, 0, 255); // Pure white
uint32_t blue = strip.Color(0, 0, 255); // Blue
uint32_t green = strip.Color(0, 255, 0); // Green
uint32_t red = strip.Color(255, 0, 0); // Green

uint32_t c1 = green; 
uint32_t c2 = w; 

int photoReading = 0;
int tempReading = 0;
int tempOut =0;
int photoOut = 0;
// setup() runs once, when the device is first turned on
void setup() {
    Particle.variable("Brightness", photoReading);
    Particle.variable("Temperature", tempReading);
    strip.begin();
   
}

// loop() runs over and over again, as quickly as it can execute.
void loop() {
    photoReading = analogRead(photoPin);
    tempReading = analogRead(tempPin);
    
    // tempOut = map(tempReading, 3300, 4000, 1, 2);
    // photoReading = map(photoReading, 200, 400, 1, 2);
    
    tempOut = map(tempReading, 0, 100, 1, 2);
    photoReading = map(photoReading, 0, 100, 1, 2);
    
    delay(100);
    
    if (photoOut == 2){
       // Particle.publish();
        kiss();
    }
    else{
        ambient();
    }
    if(tempOut == 1){
        c1 = red;
    }
    else if(tempOut == 2){
        c1 = blue;
    }
    delay (500);
}

int ambient(){
    for( int i = 0; i < strip.numPixels(); i++ ){
        strip.setPixelColor(i, c1); // set a color 
        strip.show();
        delay( 100 );
    }
    return 1;
}

int kiss(){
     
    for( int i = 0; i < strip.numPixels(); i++ ){
        strip.setPixelColor(i, c1); // set a color 
        strip.show();
        delay( 100 );
    }
    for( int i = 0; i < strip.numPixels(); i++ ){
        strip.setPixelColor(i, c2); // set a color 
        strip.show();
        delay( 100 );
    }
    return 1;
}

Click to Expand

Lover's Cups Single Device Remake

Eunice Yuan - https://youtu.be/S4mEqVu3rKs

Reflection

Restoring the Lover’s Cups emphasized how simple, everyday gestures like drinking or lifting a cup can hold profound emotional significance. The original design relied on basic components—motion sensors, LEDs, and RF communication—to create symbolic and meaningful interactions. Its elegance lay in its simplicity, embodying the principles of calm technology by fostering intimacy through subtle, shared rituals.

Recreating the device revealed key challenges, particularly in achieving precision. Reducing sensor noise and calibrating temperature readings emerged as critical hurdles, highlighting the delicate balance between reliability and user experience.

These challenges underscored the importance of stable sensors and accurate real-time data. Looking ahead, the next stage will prioritize refining sensor stability and exploring advanced connectivity through Particle systems to ensure seamless and reliable interactions. This approach will build on the original vision while addressing technical limitations for a more robust and scalable design.