A. Corgi Ball Catching Game – Hongxi(Shane) Zheng – Professor Andy
B. CONCEPTION AND DESIGN:
This project is designed to be running on Arduino and Processing, obviously, and it could read off the value from the flex sensor in order to trigger the image on processing. On processing, there is an image of corgi running, and once processing receivee any significant output to the serial port, then it would trigger the ball to be bounced out. The ball’s movement is randomized, and the dog will bring back the ball once it reaches the ball, then waiting for input again.
The user testing session definately gives me much insight on how the project should go in the end, but before that, it was Andy’s idea to bring vector into the code, so it would perform much better on visual.
Although it was something we have never learned in class, and it does give me a pain in the back, in the end the result does come out really nice, even though in comparsion with others in class it was something not outstanding, but I was satisified.
Then the user testing gives me the idea of we should not just put the flex sensor on the table but at least let it hand. We did have the idea of placing it on the wood stick to let it look like a seasaw, or have some other ways of triggering it, but in the end we have not had a great idea on how to achive it, so it looks a little shabby still.
C. FABRICATION AND PRODUCTION:
We had the idea of digital pet at first, much like the old, classic digital pet on the watch or something in the eariler days of technology, but we gave up on this idea, because there were so much needed to be achomplished, and having them chaging the function displayed accordingly is likely going to be a pain, so we goes with the most imporant part of the digital pet design, and that is to play with it.
The project was never intended to be this hard at coding first. We had the code of a ball bouncing according to mouse grab/arduino input much earily before the user testing session. This is probably the most success I have found during that process, because I found my code working just fine and capable to adjust the ball speed accordingly.
However, as we decided to go with using vector in the code, we had much trouble, and I spend a long time learning how it should work, and how I should code this to work around my projcct.
Now, those were just a bit of complain of what I had went through, but I don’t regret doing so, and I considered it to be a big success because the end movemnt of both the dog and the ball looks nice.
I also forgot to mentioned, we originally don’t have the drawing of the corgi, and we wrote our code using two balls chasing each other, then we go from using image of a corgi, but with some white background, to me drawing a corgi and have the background to be transparent for better look in the end.
D. CONCLUSIONS:
Now as we think back to this project’s original idea of digital pet, I would not call this project perfect, because it is far from it, but I would also call it successful, because learning while working is also fun. The project does achive the goal of entertaining, and it is simple but also interactive.
E. APPENDIX
Here are the archive file of my code.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rjX3VW2hZ26iNJ-4jYV2W1WKlnVRibXo/view?usp=sharing