And there it is, finally went by the midterm.
The midterm project’s title is the Weight scale, and my team’s instructor is Andy Garcia.
We originally had two different ideas for how this midterm should go and what we wish to create, for me, I wish to create a music player that could play the sound of the Chinese traditional note of Gong Shang Jue Zhi Yu, but in the end, we figured that this may not be as interesting and interactive as enough. so we give up on this idea. Then it is my partner Dino’s idea to create a weight scale. He is recently cutting weight, so he is on a diet, and for me, I’m overweight, so the project kinda fits with us. However, having just a scale is boring, what is important is the interaction. What we can make out of a scale? How to make this interactive? This became our next problem.
In the later discussion with professor Andy, we began to think about two approaches, one focusing on the feedback, and one focusing on the display, for the feedback we have been learning many of the materials we used in class. We think of using the buzzer and led as user feedback, by inserting a number into the program, each input in number will result in a reaction from a buzzer and led, letting the user feel that there is an interaction. However, we think this is very odd in terms of a project since there is not much to be built. We, later on, decide to focus on the display, which is to create more like a more realistic scale.
We break this building portion down into several parts, the weighting function portion, the display function portion, and the outlook portion. Since when prototyping we think of using cardboard which was given to us and many of our fellow classmates are using them as well, we decided to do the same thing. Additionally, we borrowed a weight sensor from the equipment room for the weighting, thus we begin with the building.
It comes us with many problems when doing so. I have never used a weight sensor, and the ones we borrowed are also not in a good shape, the wire is constantly being pulled out since the thin wires inside are too fragile. The coding is confusing, and we also found out that, using cardboard to adjust the weight sensor is a no-go since cardboard is too weak for object holding and also for screwing the sensor. It could not provide a solid standing.
Thus I have to go online and find merchants who cut the acrylic boards to make the platform for me, and in the end, it comes out very nice. Also, the merchant, after understanding what I want to design, suggested I purchase an LCD screen and told me that it would be better for the visual representation, which is also a problem we think to overcome when prototyping. Having the user looking constantly at the data displayed on the laptop screen does not seem to work well during the user testing session. So I asked the merchant to cut additional holes on the acrylic board for the spot to screw in the screen.
In the end, after we have overcome many of the problems we faced during coding and building, the result looks pretty nice. Our project had the instruction displayed on the lcd screen each run we start the Arduino, and the button reaction from the IR remote control, although is not very sensitive and requires time between each button press to react and decode, the process was interesting. I think what we achieved is pretty much aligned with what we envisioned back in the beginning from the idea generating.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zbZL2q2ldcwbvU5CJftV5gE6Ge2N7Fvk?usp=sharing