Believe It Yourself Kits Support Classic Superstitions with Technology

As a general rule, the further science and technology progress, the less we rely on superstitions. Crossing the path of a black cat isn’t scary when you know that there is no valid reason that that should indicate that you’ll come to harm. It’s easy enough to use statistical analysis to determine that there is no such thing as a lucky number, and that the month you were born in isn’t a predictor of your future success. But despite knowing that intellectually, it’s still easy for us to cling to our superstitions. To explore some popular ancient superstitions, automata.farm has designed as series of electronics kits called Believe It Yourself.

In total, there are three Believe It Yourself (BIY) kits: the BIY.SEE, BIY.MOVE, and BIY.HEAR. Each kit has a Raspberry Pi for computing, a set of sensors to help it accomplish its task, and some sort of output for revealing your destiny. The BIY.MOVE kit has a GPS module and a distance sensor that allows it to act as a compass to direct you towards harmony according to the beliefs of Chinese geomancy and feng shui. Users can select an element to attune to, and the BIY.MOVE will indicate the optimal direction for them to go to find harmony.

The BIY.HEAR board is equipped with a microphone and natural language processing. It’s designed to automate Indian numerology and astrology, which is based on the meanings hidden in the number of letters in words. After listening to what you say, it will speak your fortune out loud. The final kit, BIY.SEE, uses a Google AIY Vision Bonnet to look at the world around it and inform the user if anything is unlucky according to Italian superstitions and the logic of Smorfia. Of course, none of these kits can do anything supernatural, but they are a very interesting way to interpret ancient superstitions.