Name: Yuru Chen
Professor: Marcela Godoy
Interaction Lab
20 March 2019
Partner: Skyler Liu
Build the circuit
At first, individually, I built an circuit using the diagram above with H-Bridge. I connected all the wires and the power source according to the diagram above. At first, I forgot to connect the external power source to the circuit, so it worked well.
However, when I tried to start the second step, something went wrong. I didn’t double check if may circuit was connected correctly so when I connected it to the external power source, the circuit stopped working. Then I unplug the Arduino to my computer and the external power source. I didn’t realize I killed my Arduino until I started to test it. I realized I might broke it when I found I couldn’t upload the code to Arduino and I asked one of the Learning Assistants, Eszter, for help. She told me I might have just broken my Arduino, and later Nick confirmed that I killed it.
However, to finish up the last step with my partner, we borrowed another Arduino and built the circuit again. This time the circuit worked pretty well.
So at last, we started to connect the mechanical arms and the markers together to create a drawing machine.
Answers to the questions
- I’m interested in building a machine that can open the curtains automatically. In addition, when the curtains are closed, it will play soft music that can help people fall asleep soon. Here, for this machine, I will use actuator to drive the curtain, close or open it. Moreover I can connect the actuator to a light sensor, when its dark enough outside it will be closed automatically. However, it can only be open manually by pushing a button so that people who use it can have a good sleep free of disturbance. Also, when the curtain is closed, people can choose to let the machine play soft music to help them fall asleep and set a specific time for it to stop.
- The project I choose to compare with is Waves by Daniel Palacios Jiménez in 2006. This robot is driven by motors, and thus can make sounds and waves, which creates both auditory sense and vision sense. The project I did during the recitation is much the same like this one created my Daniel, which is also driven by a motor and create vision sense by making the mark draw on the paper. I think the artists chose the motor and for his project because he wants them to rotate and create a kind of vision effect of waves and motor can do that easily.