For this recitation, I worked with Shawn. We chose the Ultrasonic Ranger (AKA Ultrasonic Sensor OR HC-SR04) which can be used to detect distance and created an reactive interaction like the doorbell in Family Mart.
Building the input circuit is quite easy for us since the code is provided and we only need to copy-paste that.
Then we encountered a lot problems while trying to write the code for the buzzer to perform as output. Most of our problems are undeclared variables, forgotten “;” or “}”, forgotten uploaded file for note declaration. But the worst two mistakes we make are that we used two “set” and “loop” sessions which are not comprehensive for Arduino and that we forget the “Serial.begin()”. These are the vital mistakes which caused us to redo the code a bit.
Since we only have little time left and cannot fully try a new sensor, we tried to change the coding to have different notes.
Question 1:
Our circuit resembles those welcoming doorbells in convenience shops. Meanwhile since it uses if sentences, it can also be used in warning system as part of the guarding protections. Within certain distance, it will ring the alarm and the alarm can have levels. For instance, if someone’s distance to the house or exhibit is less than 50m, some sound effect happen. When it’s <30m, an alarm with higher notes will ring.
Question 2:
I do think code is like recipes or tutorials in the perspective that all three things will be followed step by step to receive certain outcome. Especially for a Western recipe, ingredients are clarified at the beginning just like how we need to define all variables. The amount of all ingredients or even sauces are guided to be in a certain range, like how we teach the machine to learn about some variables. and the whole step by step process is almost the same as those sentences in coding.
Question 3:
Personally I feel like computer influences humans to be more interested and used to fast-pace life and this can be observed by watching more fragmented information. This can be explained as the result of advanced automatic technologies which simplifiers many easy repetitive work and enables every individual to have access to a wide variety of varying information. This large amount of information cannot be all digested because of its size and refreshing speed, so people can only intake fragmented information and hardly dig deep into them.
Certainly it also changes people’s common language use and thoughts to be less flexible since as a device so heavily depended on in daily life, it already changes our way of working and thinking. The good thing is in many areas especially science ones, breaking down problems into smaller units and think thoroughly provides better outcome. But on the contrary, it might also interfere people’s inspiration and innovation.
good job Xueping!
I’m just missing your code. Next time always copy and paste your code here or you can post a link to your code on github if you have an account there: https://github.com/
Also copy and paste the questions before you answer, so anyone reading your post can understand what you are answering.
Finally, please clarify, are Chinese food recipes different than Western recipes? I’m just curious 🙂
Sorry I have not saved the code for that but I will do it next time.
In general, Chinese food recipes are like Western ones, but they never have a clear mention on the amount of ingredients. In most cases, it only refers to ingredients roughly like “have a bowl of minced meat” or “add enough water” or “add suitable amount of soy sauce”. It will be hard for beginners who just start cooking since they cannot have a good control of seasoning but later we just get used to it.