Author: zw1806

Our U-Maze, is an interactive game that combines Arduino and Processing, user can control a digital ball to go through a maze, in the meantime unfold the under layer of the maze, which is a photo taken of the user at the beginning of the game. The concept of the game, was originally motivated by a mobile maze game, where player basically doing similar thing except there is no under layer, but the ball would left color on the road it has passed. The idea of adding the player’s photo was our own inspiration, since it would be really fun to add a part of taking photos at the beginning, both improves the interaction and gives our project a deeper meaning. The process of solving the maze, is in the meantime unfolding the figure of yourself, it’s like a process of self-recognition.

During the user-test session, our project as a prototype received some useful advice, for example the ball would possibly be overspread by the color of the background underlayer, bringing players difficulty in locating their positions. We made adaption to the project, as we changed the color mode of the ball, making it twinkling, changing its color among a ranges of cool colors. Another is that, Professor suggested us to make the phyical input of our project creative, rather than simply adopting joystick as an input to control the ball. We tried hard on that, as we tried to use a box, with the inner space being limited to a cross-road, where a real tiny ball can move from four directions by players leaning the box, with four pressure sensors at the end of each sides to detect in which direction the player hopes the ball to move. However, it turned out that the sensor was not sensitive enough to detect single hit, thus the design could not meet our expectation and unfortunately failed. We finally decided to use joystick as the input, it might be simple but it’s also quite visual and easy to get on hand.

Before our final presentation, we added several new changes to the project, including sound that guiding the player to take photos at the beginning and a click when the ball hit a wall. We also added several new maps so that everytime the game started, it could be a different challenge. Our project turned out to be very successful, our audience liked it very much and we felt happy and content.  

Being in IMA and Interlab this semester was really a nice experience, as I’ve got in touch with new things, Arduino, Processing, etc. I’ve also known nice people, Professor Young, who’s really an earnest professor and is always ready to provide us help; Malika, my workmate, who gave me a lot of help and spent a lot of effots in making the project.  Thanks to everyone that helps me this semester when I met difficulties. 

This is my work on the recitation. I imported an image to processing and then use Arduino to control the size of the image. The image function was used to adjust the size of the image, a potentiometer was used as the controller and sent values to processing. 

According to this week’s reading about computer vision, I learned that computer vision has a fairly long history, artist began to adopt it since 70s. The legendary artwork, Videoplace, suprised me a lot, which is a multiplayer interactive computer vision  artwork. This give me the thought that to combine computer vision in our final project might be a good idea, it can greatly enrich the interaction of the project, since be able to see one’s movement or figure on the screen can make the interaction much more interesting. 

According to our plan, we didn’t expect ot use computer vision in our final project, though it is a good choice. We may need to use some game designing knowledge and some logic desicions. We can certainly try to find that if there’s any place we can use computer vision. which is such a cool idea!

We decided to give our project the name ‘E-Maze’, an interactive device integrated Arduino and Processing. We get the inspiration from an Iphone game called ‘Amaze’, in which the player need to control a ball to go through a 2D maze, with barriers restrict its path, as the ball going with the player dragging it, it colors those paths that it passed, and the player cannot win until the ball have passed every path in the maze. Similarly, we decide to make a game, using Arduino andProcessing to achieve similar outcomes. 

The challenge of our project is that, we are going to define that the player, while controling the ball, they cannot stop the ball until it hits the the nearest barriers, in case of cheating, meanwhile they have to control the ball to go over every squares of the paths in the maze to finish the game, which is a challenge for them in controlling through Arduino, also a challenge for us to achieve such functions through coding. This project, we believe is quite appealing to most audiences, since there would be color printing the path as the ball moving on, meanwhile in our further consideration, there would be different level, dividing by the difficulty of the map. There could be a timing function, the player will all get a first map of the same difficulty, and they could be assigned to different maps as they finished the first task in different times. This could make the game more colorful and provide the palyer with more challenges. 

According to our plan, we are going to finish the coding part approximately by next weekend, which means we could get more time to run and test it afterwards. Meanwhile, we also need to use 3D printing to make an action bar to control the ball to go. These would approxiamtely take us 2 weeks. 

As I mentioned before in the research essay, my definition of interctive project has been updated, influenced by some works made by artists. I now believe that interctive projects also need to have a sense of beauty, which could provide the users with a sense of joy. As a response to that, the color producing as the ball passing its way, is a way of reflecting our understanding of interactive. It not only color the work, also give the player a sense of fulfillment and joy. 

1. Recitation 7:  This recitation provided us a chance to practice the function in processing which integrates keyboard input into the picture processing draws. It was challenging at first, however, after I made clear of how the function works, it’s not that diffcult.
2. The code of my exercise is: 

	int i = 30; void setup() {
	size(500, 500);
	frameRate(4);
	background(0);
	rect(30, 20, 55, 55, 7);
	fill(255, 50, 60);
	}
	void draw() {
	background(0);
	rect(i, i, 50, 50, 7);
	fill(i, i, 50);
	}
	void keyPressed() {
	if (key == CODED) {
	if (keyCode == DOWN) {
	i++;
	}
	}
	}

2. Homework:

int r = 80;
int i = 1;
int l = 0;
int m = 300;
int n = 300;
void setup(){
size(600,600);
frameRate(60);
colorMode(HSB);
}
void draw(){
background(255);
strokeWeight(10);
stroke(l,255,255);
if(l < 255){
l ++;
}
ellipse(m,n,r,r);
r += i;
if(r >= 300){
i = -i;
r += i;
}
if(r <= 80){
i = 1;
r += i;
}
}
void keyPressed(){
if(key == CODED){
if(keyCode == UP){
n -= 20;
}if(keyCode == DOWN){
n += 20;
}if(keyCode == LEFT){
m -= 20;
}if(keyCode == RIGHT){
m += 20;
}
}
}

Final Project Preparation

According to my interpretation of interaction, a project can be called so only if there are actual information exchange between the device and the user, such as physical and visual notice when there are certain movements being made by the users. Therefore, in our mid-term project, the ‘Cross Wire’, we designed LED lights to inform the user when they touch the copper wire, what’s more, there’s change in color of the light when the user fail or win the game. That is the interactive project we made using Arduino, and now, we acquired one more tool, Processing, through which we can realize cross-platform and even multi-dimensional interaction experience.

For interctive project examples, I searched online for informations. I looked up projects that contain both Arduino and Processing, and most of them are quite interesting, I guess that’s partly because as the methods we can use increase, the more possibilities our work could have. I found one project very impressive, the author created a drawing device using mouse and potentiometers to draw. Three potentiometers are used to adjust the RGB colors showing in processing, and the mouse is a handle controling the operation such as refreshing the drawing board and move the pen around. This project matches with my understanding of interaction very well, the user can really do something with the device, as well as getting visual and direct oucome from the device. Options are provided to the users, basic need can be met during drawing. Another interactive project, which has impressed me since before, is a project of a ‘mirror’, with physical piixels such as cotton and wooden pieces, and the camera installed in front can track the motion of the user, and reflect their figure on the mirror in real time. This project gives me a feeling of charm and beauty, it can be defined of an artwork, it echos with the concept of definition perfectly, providing the user with a feeling of looking at their digital but physical copy inside the ‘mirror’.  

The first project, interests me for its well-integration of Arduino and Processing, and completeness of basic function, which is a practical prototype of possible interactive product. The second project, interests me for its special taste of artistic feeling and thus provide the users with nice feeling and enjoyment. 

I now realize with a new definition of interaction, that is, a successful interaction project should also give the user with a sense of joy, not just simply clicking some buttons and some simple physical feedbacks in returns. There are enough physical or visual feedbacks, and there are enjoyments produced by the interaction between people and the device you create. 

Works citied:

1. https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/eschulzpsd/rotational-symmetry-drawing-613503?ref=tag&ref_id=processing&offset=6.  ‘Rotational Symmetry Drawing’, by user ‘Eschulzpsd’, on Arduino Project Hub. published on December.23, 2018