Author: zw1806

This is my midterm project blog post.

1. Context and Significance : Before we decided on what to make, we browsed on the Internet to see what possibly we can make, for we only get limited mterials and limited ability of programming. We have one specific criteria in mind that is, our project needs to be fun and interactive, and we came to the “buzz wire” game, in which the player has to move a conductive handle across a copper wire and try not to let them touch each other. It’s an interesting game and it’s interactive and challenging, thus we decided to take it as a  inspiration of our own making. The interactive elements in the game are quite visualized, there are lights on to inform the user that they touch the wire once, and through the whole process the user is making his own efforts to actually interact with the device.  The target of our project can be anyone who wants to take a challenge on completing the game. 
2. Conseption and Design:  We decided to follow some parts of the original  interactive elements from the “buzz wire” game. We built a box and put the whole game inside, and we used LED lights and put them in visible place so that the users can know how many time they have touch the wire.  One fun aspect we add to the game is that we didn’t let the whole game comletely exposed to the player, instead, we design two peep holes on the top of the box., which add more fun to the game and make it more challenging. We recieved many useful feedbacks from the user test session, which enable us to improve the design of the box, for example, the box was made from paper board, which made it not so stable, thus we rearrange the position of the components and made it more stable. 
3. Fabrication and Production: As I just mentioned , in the user test session we received  lots of feedbacks and they gave us valuable information to make our box better. For our design of the peep holes,  people generally like it but some says it’s hard for user to sense the depth and thus makes it very difficult ot control the handle. They suggested us to remove the peep holes design and replace it with broader peeping window. We didn’t take that decision but we did make changes to the wire it self, making it not so curved ; we also change the position of the LED inside, moving it to a place that is visible to the users when looking through the peep holes. We also added a reset button that enable the user to reset for themselves, since we found that it’s always annoying to reset through Arduino and reduce the possibility of touching the wire before the user started.  We used 3D printing for the peep holes, making them into two seperate cylinders.

4. Conclusions: The goal of our project is to let uses experience the interacton with the game through the support of Arduino. Both during the user test session and the presentation our project had successfully lots of people that want to take a try, which inspired us a lot. Though there are still flaws of our project, I’d say it has met with our expectation of being both interactive and entertaining. The value of making this project is significant, for this is my first time conducitng a device without any instructions, we met lots of barriers during the process, however, through our joint efforts, we did it.  We gained experience on seraching for informations, designing the project, processing users’ feedback and making changes to both physical design and coding programs. It’d a great lesson for me. If we had more time, we would possibly improve the interactive part, add more elements to it such as sounds and visualized numbers, which could create a better interactive experience for users. 

from: https://www.cnblogs.com/zhaoyu1995/p/5931866.html

This is the picture I chose to draw, because I think it’s very interesting to draw a moon and a cloud, the whole picture shows a sense of smooth and peace.

This is the work I realized at the end. I used the vertex function and bezierVertex() function to draw the cloud and the moon. The outcome was actually quite similar to the original motif, since it’s not very hard to use code to locate the position of the patterns. 

Using processing to draw is a new way for me, it has its own fancy characterisitc, for example some interesting art works can be made through processing, for instance I’ve seen people using processing to draw a robot with arm waving, which is very interesting.  The feature of combining programming with drawing is powerful, many thing can be realized through various types of fuctions such as using loops to create beautiful and regular pattern. However, I still consider it to be flawed, for example the enjoyment of painting itself almost disappeared during the use of processing, by simply typing code to create things, it’s a boring process, without emotions. 

On recitation on 3.15, we did an exercise of building a drawing machine.  We used Arduino as always, as well as a servo,  an H-bridge, which is a new component of the circuit. Here is the circuit

Below is the code we used to drive the servo 
#include <Stepper.h>

const int stepsPerRevolution = 200; // change this to fit the number of steps per revolution
// for your motor

// initialize the stepper library on pins 8 through 11:
Stepper myStepper(stepsPerRevolution, 8, 9, 10, 11);

void setup() {
// set the speed at 60 rpm:
myStepper.setSpeed(60);
// initialize the serial port:
Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
// step one revolution in one direction:
Serial.println(“clockwise”);
myStepper.step(stepsPerRevolution);
delay(500);

// step one revolution in the other direction:
Serial.println(“counterclockwise”);
myStepper.step(-stepsPerRevolution);
delay(500);
}

After setting up circuit and the code, we began to make the arm to control the pen to move and draw patterns. 

Here’s the video of how our project worked. Very excited! 

Question 1: After using several types of sensors, actuators, and exploring with processing combined with electronic device, I began to realize the infinite possiblities of physical computing, and there are even more to discover if interactive concepts are attached.  Thus, I’m most interested in building interactive type of machines, with visual illustrations and practical functions, such as VR lens. Those device can provide us more sense of our surroundings and is enable users to receive more informations from current situation, which is a cool idea to me.

Question 2: The “wooden mirror” seems really appealing to me. The artist used an electromechanically “mirror” which consists with controllable pieces of single conponents, such as wood pieces and other materials to build pixels that form a bigger picture. The camera installed can track the target that faces the mirror and then reacts by sending signals to those “pixels” and reflects the target on the mirror. This seems to me is an authentic interactive art project. By sensing the image of the user and tracking motions, there are communications in between. Compared to our project this time,  the difference is quite obvious, the interacting part of the art piece is much more natural and visualized, what’s more,the device acts with flexibility.Those together with the use of warm style materials like woods, give a sense of romance to the art piece. 

The artist was wise on choosing the specific actuators for the art works, since the movements of those mechanical “pixel” are complicated. To choose appropriate actuators, enough observation and experience are important. To make sure what is the goal and thus to think and choose based on that. 

The name of our group project is ‘Gone With the Tea’. It’s about drinking bubble tea in the future, using future interactive technology, which is quite funny since bubble tea is so popular now.  The focus about the project is a fictioned hemet, with a built-in AI and sensors, it can communicates directly with your minds without you speaking anything and then executes further command, such as ordering bubble tea.  In the drama the process of contacting bubble tea store and ordering bubble tea were all done automatically by the communication between the user’s mind, helmet’s AI and the AI in the tea store. We decide to illustrate this fictioned story in the future since it’s quite related with the theme of this course, interaction, and the interaction we are imagining has realized the possibilty of communicating without certain mediums such as words and actions, but simply by user thinking and interacting with the AI. 

Our props in the performance                       The AI cabinet in the bubble tea store

 

Our ‘advanced’ helmet

For the performace part, I played the user’s part. In the play I first wrote, I had several lines, however we decided to take them away, and the part of my role are only actions and facial expressions, since we thought this would emphasize the part of which the  user’s mind interacting with the AI. The performance was quite successful, we ordered a real bubble tea for performance and I tried my best to act exaggeratedly and absurdly as possible. 

This is the first circuit I made, the knocking sensor. 

This is the second circuit I made, the moisture sensor.

Both of these two circuits require the usage of the analog input port. They are actually quite simple but how to combine them with more integrated experiment might be more challenging

Answer to the questions:

1: In this recitation exercise, I assembled two sensor circuits, which was the prototypes of sensors being connected into circuits and thus letting users get the feedback from the sensor’s process. I did two circuits, one is the knocking sensor, another is the moisture sensor. If they are to be used for pragmatic purposes, I think for the moisture sensors it could be used such as by botanists, who need to do experiment about plants and need to monitor the moisture of the soil,; for the knocking sensor, we could use it in some physical experiment such as testing the force of hitting a surface, the data ouput by the sensor can provide accurate resources for researchers.

2: At the beginning of learning, coding could be like following a recipe, especially if we don’t have any background of coding. Following examples on textbooks or given by the teachers is in fact an important way to learn as a beginner, you can draw conclusions on some similarities or essential procedures of coding. However, as you learn deeper, after you have gained basic and general skills on coding, you should start to think of creating your own coding project according to what you have acquired. Imitating is necessary as a beginner, it provides the foundation for future creativity.

3:First of all, one obvious influence is that computers can provide a lot of assistance for people, which could relieve the burden for some repeating works, such as calculating and analyzing, it free us to focus on more general works. Computer also influence how people think, big data could make influence on showing people certain types of information and thus influence their view of things, which might not be a good things, people would gget caught in informations that are worthless and can not free their mind to think independently.