Print Syllabus

Introduction to Physical Computing

Fall 2012

Link to printable syllabus

Physical Computing is an approach to learning how humans communicate through computers that starts by considering how humans express themselves physically. In this course, we take the human body as a given, and attempt to design computing applications within the limits of its expression.

To realize this goal, you'll learn how a computer converts the changes in energy given off by our bodies (in the form of sound, light, motion, and other forms) into changing electronic signals that it can read interpret. You'll learn about the sensors that do this, and about very simple computers called microcontrollers that read sensors and convert their output into data. Finally, you'll learn how microcontrollers communicate with other computers.

Physical computing takes a hands-on approach, which means that you spend a lot of time building circuits, soldering, writing programs, building structures to hold sensors and controls, and figuring out how best to make all of these things relate to a person's physical expression.

Some time in weeks 1 - 3: Attend a tool safety session in the shop

For each week, you'll find:

• Practice Topics we'll discuss in class. Course notes are linked so you can read them before class, to know what we're talking about.
• Lab assignments that illustrate the practice topics. You should read through the labs and try as much as you can the week before the lab is discussed in class. We'll go over the principles in the lab in class, so bring your hardware, and you'll get a chance to try it while we discuss, and ask questions.

• Production assignments larger assignments which have scheduled times you'll be expected to show them in class.
• Reading to be read in the week they're assigned. Will come up in discussion the week after, usually.
• Blog assignments Writing the week when it's assigned. Will come up in class from time to time. Read each other's stuff too.

Come to class with questions prepared about that week's assignments. If you have no questions, be prepared to show a working version of what you made.

Week 1

Practice Topics:

• What is physical interaction?
• Interaction concepts: discrete vs continuous, parallel events vs serial events, play testing, user observation.

In-class exercise:

Assignment for next week:

• Join the physcomp listserve
• Put a link to your blog on the your class' blog list page. The link is next to your instructor's name above.

Reading for next week:

• Crawford, The Art of Interactive Design, chapters 1 and 2 (note: you will need to sign into NYUHome to view this. From your NYUHome home page, click "Research" then "books24x7.com" then search for "The Art of Interactive Design" by Chris Crawford. Alternately, try this link. )
• Bret Victor, "A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design"

Blog:

Practice topics for next week: Read through these in advance, try the labs, and come next week with questions about them.

• Understanding Electricity
• Understanding the breadboard
• A short video in a light-hearted vein on some electrical characteristics.

Labs for next week:

• Lab: Components
• Lab: Setting up a breadboard
• Lab: Electronics and using a Multimeter
• Lab: Switches

Week 2

Practice Topics:

• Understanding Electricity:
  • Ohm's Law
  • Parallel vs. serial circuits
  • Identifying electrical components
  • Making a switch

In-class discussion/exercise: Electronics lab exercises

Practice topics for next week: Read through these in advance, try the labs, and come next week with questions about them.

• What is a Microcontroller?
  • Microcontrollers and sensors in the everyday environment
• Analog vs. Digital
• Digital Input and Output
• Intro to Arduino and first program.
• analog input

Labs for next week:

• Lab: first Arduino program. Download the latest version of the Arduino software for this lab.
• Lab: Analog in

Reading for next week:

• Norman, Design of Everyday Things, ch. 1
• Norman, Emotional Design, Chapter 1, "Attractive Things Work Better".

Blog:

Week 3

Practice Topics:

• Intro to Arduino; digital and analog input from sensors

In-class discussion/exercise: Getting started with Arduino, including digital input, digital output (LED) and analog input. Blinking an LED and changing the speed of the delay

Practice topics for next week: Read through these in advance, try the labs, and come next week with questions about them.

• analog output

Labs for next week:

• Lab: servo/analog out
• Lab: Tone output

Reading for next week:

• Physical Computing's Greatest Hits (and misses).
• Making Interactive Art: Set the Stage, Then Shut Up and Listen

Blog:

Week 4

In-class discussion/exercise:

• Analog out theough Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) and Frequency Modulation (FM)
• Arduino AnalogOut() and Tone() commands
• Using External libraries: Arduino Servo library

Practice topics for next week: Read through these in advance, try the labs, and come next week with questions about them.

• serial communication week 1
  • graphing a sensor

Lab for next week:

• Lab: Serial Output

Reading for next week:

• Hoffman, Visual Intelligence

Week 5

In-class discussion/exercise:

• Serial output from a microcontroller; graphing the output a sensor to learn its behavior
• Project planning: descriptions, system diagrams, bills of materials, and budgets

Practice topics for next week: Read through these in advance, try the labs, and come next week with questions about them.

• serial communication week 2
  • multiple sensors
  • Interpreting bytes: ASCII vs. binary
  • handshaking/call-and-response

Labs for next week:

• Lab: Multiple Serial Output

Reading for next week:

• Graham Pullin, Design Meets Disability

Midterm Assignment:

• Concept presentations week 6
• Playtest reports and questions week 7
• Final plan presentations week 8
• Project working demonstrations week 9

Week 6

PRESENT THIS WEEK: Midterm concept presentations

In-class discussion/exercise:

• Play Testing Techniques
• More on serial communication
  • Multi-byte communication
  • Methods of managing the conversation: Handshaking (call-and-response), punctuation

Practice topics for next week: Read through these in advance, try the labs, and come next week with questions about them.

• high current loads and motors
  • controlling DC Motors
• Make article on How a Relay Works

Labs for next week:

• Transistor Lab

Assigment for next week:

Week 7

PRESENT THIS WEEK: Play test reports on midterms

In-class discussion/exercise:

• Controlling High Current loads;relays and transistors
• DC motor basics

Practice topics for next week: Read through these in advance, try the labs, and come next week with questions about them.

• stepper motors

• Dustyn's writing on:
  • Motors
  • Materials: what to choose and where to get
  • Making Things

Labs for next week:

• HBridge Lab

Assigment for next week:

Week 8

PRESENT THIS WEEK: Midterm system diagrams, descriptions, and BOMs.

In-class discussion/exercise:

• Advanced motor control; H-bridges and stepper motors
• Construction techniques

Reading for next week:

• Rory Hamilton's notes on preparing presentations and giving presentations

Week 9

PRESENT THIS WEEK: Midterm project demonstrations.

Assignment:

• Concept presentations week 10
• Playtest reports and questions week 11
• Final plan presentations week 12
• Project working demonstrations week 13 & 14

Blog:

Week 10

Midterm project process review: what would you have done differently? In-class discussion

PRESENT THIS WEEK: Final project concept presentations

Assigment for next week:

Week 11

PRESENT THIS WEEK: Final project playtest reports

In-class discussion/exercise:

• complex data communications
  • configuration vs. communication (command move vs. data mode)
  • addressing
  • Bluetooth serial as example
  • protocols discussion
  • Optional Bluetooth Lab or TBA depending on class topics

Assignment for next week:

Week 12

PRESENT THIS WEEK: Final project system plan presentations

Blog:

• Finish your final project documentation.

Week 13

PRESENT THIS WEEK:

• Final Project Demonstrations

Week 14

PRESENT THIS WEEK:

• Final Project Demonstrations

Grading

Participation & Attendance: 40%
Production Assignments: 40%
Journal: 20%

Participation & Attendance

Showing up on time, engaging in the class discussion, and offering advice and critique on other projects in the class is a major part of your grade. Please be present and prompt. Lateness will hurt your grade. If you're going to be late or absent, please email your instructor in advance. If you have an emergency, please let your instructor know as soon as you can. Please turn in assignments on time as well.

Laptops

Laptop use is fine if you are using your laptop to present in class, or if we're in the middle of an exercise that makes use of it. Whenever classmates are presenting or we're in the midst of a class discussion, however, please keep your laptop closed. The quality of the class depends in large part on the quality of your attention and active participation, so please respect that and close your lid.

Mobile Phones

Please put them on vibrate or turn them off before you come to class unless they are part of your project. If you have an emergency that requires you to answer your phone during class, please tell your instructor ahead of time.

Lab Assignments

There is a lab activity for nearly every class in the first half of the semester. They are very short, simple activities. These are the basic steps you need to go through to understand the principle discussed in class each week. They're designed to help you not only to understand the technical details, but also to get a feel for what the technologies we're discussing can do, so that you can incorporate them into actual applications. You should at least complete the steps outlined in the lab activity each week, so that you understand practically what it is we're talking about. Document on your blog any discoveries you make, pitfalls you hit, and details not covered in the class or the lab that you think will be useful for your fellow students and future students in this class.

Production Assignments

For production assignments, you'll be expected to present your project in class on the day that it's due. If you're working in a group, all group members should be present, and should participate equally in the presentation.

Journal & Documentation

You are expected to keep an online journal of your progress. The purpose of the journal is twofold. First, it is a valuable way for you to communicate to your instructor that you are keeping up with the work in the class. We read the journals to see how students are doing, so you should update your journal regularly throughout the semester. At a minimum, reference to each week's work is expected, as well as reference to the readings, and thorough documentation of the production projects and technical research. Second, the journal is a way to document your work for your own use and that of others. Many ITP students have found themselves using their journals as a place to store notes, code samples, and more.

Good documentation habits for this class:

You may choose to document your major projects in a separate individual or group site if you choose, but you will be expected to link your site to the main site, and contribute to the class site as well nonetheless. Please avoid flash, shockwave, or other sites that are not text-searchable, as they won't show up on search engines for others to use.

Blogs are great for documenting your process, as they're usually defaulted to organizing the information chronologically. However, projects summarized in a blog can be confusing. It's often worthwhile to set up a separate page or pages to summarize your projects when they're done.

You should document your projects thoroughly. Plan in advance, and perhaps as a group, to have what you need to document at least your midterms and finals. Photos, video, drawings, schematics, and notes are all valuable forms of documentation. Explain the project at the beginning of your documentation, so that people who come to the site from outside this class will understand the overview before they get the explanation.

Don't overload your notes with code. If you've made a big improvement on an existing piece of code, post your new code, and link to the code you based it on (just as you would in citing a pervious author in a paper). If you only changed one part of an existing program, post only the part you changed, and link to the original. Make sure any code you post is well-commented, so you and others can understand what it does.

Always cite the sources of your code, the places you learned techniques from, and the inspirations of your ideas. This is the equivalent to citing your sources in a written paper, and copying code or techniques without attribution is plagiarism. few ideas come out of the blue, and your readers can learn a lot from the sources you learned from or were inspired by.

Good documentation should include a description and illustration of your project. You should include what it looks like, what it does, what the user or participant does in response. It should give enough information that someone from outside ITP, who's never seen the project, can get an understanding of what your project is.

You should also include a section describing the workings of the project, aimed at a more informed reader (me, or next year's classmates), so that the details of production are clear. It doesn't have to include every scrap of code and circuit diagram, but it should make clear what the major components of the system are, and how they communicate, and what the code, if any, does.

Work on this as you go, don't put it off until the end. Your fellow classmates will find your notes as useful too.

Pictures and video help a lot.

Some good project summary sites:

• http://www.tweenbots.com/ by Kacie Kinzer
• http://tomgerhardt.com/fireLight/ By Tom Gerhardt. Simple project, doesn't need a lot to introduce it.
• http://thomas-gerhardt.com/itp/FeltResistor/ Nice explanation of why, and summary of how it works, in a sentence or two.

A few good recent sample journals:

• Bona Kim's final project is explained well
• Matt Richardson's blog documents the weekly labs well and he wrote up his final project nicely as well.
• Nicely detailed blog throughout the semester from Roopa Vasudevan
• Another detailed narrative from Justin Lange
• Good narrative blog from Owen Roberts
• Useful questions at the end of each blog post, for next class:
• Nice example of the first Arduino lab turned into a game by Mimi Onouoha
• Moustache switch by Tak Cheung, nicely documented in video.
• Morgen Fleisig's intro to physical computing blog
• Jason Babcock's journal These are notes Jason kept throughout his time at ITP. Each section covers the technical details of a specific project. Sometimes the task is part of a larger project, and sometimes it's a project in itself. This is an excellent example of how to document the tech details of your projects.

Books

Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with Computers, Dan O'Sullivan and Tom Igoe ©2004, Thomson Course Technology PTR; ISBN: 159200346X
Includes all the stuff covered in class and lots of advanced examples as well. This book was developed from this course. You can get through the course without it, but it'll make your life a whole lot easier if you read it while taking the class. The code examples in the book are not written for Arduino, but the concepts for each exercise apply to Arduino as well as the controllers described in the book. Even without the specific code, the examples will be useful, especially when combined with the labs in this class.

Making Things Talk, 2nd edition, Tom Igoe ©2011, Make Books; ISBN: 978-1449392437
Introduction to communication between computers, including serial communications, wireless, networking, RFID, and more. Though some of the material is beyond the scope of this class, some of it may be useful in understanding computer communications.

Making Things Move, Dustyn Roberts ©2010,McGraw-Hill/TAB ISBN-10: 0071741674 | ISBN-13: 978-0071741675
Dustyn's book is an invaluable guide to construction of mechanical things. Whether you're making a simple motor project or a Mars rover, it's a good place to get started.

Below are recommended texts for the course in general. You have readings from the first three. All of them are good inspirational guides for physical computing and computing in general. They are not assigned, but you'll find them to be useful reading in physical interaction design.

The Design of Everyday Things, Donald A. Norman ©1990 Doubleday Books; ISBN: 0385267746
If you design at all, or work with people who do, read this. A lucid approach to the psychology of everyday interaction and how the objects we deal with could be better designed to match the strengths and weaknesses of the way we think. His predictions about physical interaction design and information design, some accurate and some not, are interesting history lessons eleven years after the first edition.

The Art of Interactive Design, Chris Crawford, ©2002 No Starch Press; ISBN: 1886411840
Written in a very casual style, this book nevertheless is an excellent and concise summary of what interaction design is, why it is important, and what problems it brings with it. Anyone seriously interested in interaction design, physical or not, should read this book.

Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things Donald A. Norman. Basic books, ©2005. ISBN: 0465051367.
In this book, Norman counters some of the points he makes in his first book, The Design of Everyday Things, by pointing out that we do make decisions about design based on emotional reasoning, and that design affects us emotionally. He describes Human reaction to design on three levels: the visceral, or how it appears; the behavioral, or how it acts; and reflective, or how it makes us think and feel about ourselves through our association with it.

The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size, Tor Nørretranders ©1998 Viking Press; ISBN: 0670875791
Makes the case that much of our experience of the world does not come to us through our consciousness; in fact, the majority of it dealt with pre-consciously.

The following are good references for electronics hobbyists. Take a look at both, and get one or the other as a general reference, or find an electronics reference of your own.

Make: Electronics, Charles Platt, © 2009 Make Books, Sebastapol, CA; 1st edition ISBN: 0596153740. An excellent intro to electronics. Practical, readable, and enjoyable. Start here.

Getting Started in Electronics, Forrest M. Mims III, ©1983, Forrest M. Mims III
A very basic introduction to electricity and electronics, written in notebook style. Includes descriptions of the basic components and what they do, and how they relate to each other.

Practical Electronics for Inventors. Paul Scherz, ©2000, McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing; ISBN: 0070580782
A more in-depth treatment of electronics, with many practical examples and illustrations. An excellent reference for those comfortable with the basic topics. The use of plumbing systems as examples to demonstrate electric principles makes for some very clear illustrations of how different components work. Good chapters on sound electronics and motors as well.

Getting Started with Arduino, Massimo Banzi ©2008, O'Reilly Media ISBN 10: 0-596-15551-4 | ISBN 13: 9780596155513
A straightforward beginners' guide to most of the beginning exercises in this class.

Fashioning Technology: a DIY Intro to Smart Crafting Syuzi Pakhchyan. Make books, ©2008. ISBN: 0596514379.
This book includes a nice introduction to basic electronics and a number of construction projects for simple electronic crafts. The construction techniques are aimed primarily at wearables and soft circuit projects, but they'reuseful for a number of other projects as well.

Starter kit PDF

A longer list of books for inspiration and reference is available online at Tom's books link.

Parts needed for Intro Physical Computing
Note that there are some parts available in the physical computing lab cabinet. This cabinet is not meant as a constant supply for physical computing students. It is a place to get things the first time, so you know what they look like before you have to order them online. If you need a last-minute LED or regulator and there's one available, it's okay to take it, but please don't hoard parts from this cabinet, and please don't count on it as your main source for parts.

The NYU Computer Store carries kits to make your life easier. In it you will find enough parts to complete the basic instructions in each lab. They also carry a basic toolkit, with the minimum amount of tools you might need for the same (those tools can be handy around the house too). If you have none of your own parts or tools, purchase the basic parts kit and basic tool kit, at least.

Here's what's in the kit:

Kits supplied by adafruit The ARDX kit

Basic Parts Kit

$90.00 as of 9/2/10

This kit includes many standard parts used in the ITP physical computing labs. It includes samples of the most common components like resistors and capacitors; just enough to get you started. It also includes a servomotor, DC motor, motor controller ICs, power connectors, and switches. There's also an Arduino microcontroller in it as well.

What's in the kit (image courtesy of Adafruit):

Note: We won't be using the experimenter's guide in the kit. The standard circuits you'll learn in this class are different than those in the ARDX experimenter's guide. While the guide is useful, there are some circuits in it that can be built easier. We've opted for the simple versions, which you'll see in the lab tutorials on this site.

Basic Tool Kit

The shop has tools you can use, but there are a few tools you should pick up for yourself. The NYU computer store carries many of these tools that do the job quite well. When you go to the bookstore to buy your kit, bring your student ID. The intro kits will be reserved for ITP students for the first few weeks of the semester.

screwdriver

diagonal cutter

wire stripper

needle-nose pliers

digital multimeter

drill bits

If you don't want to buy a full drill bit index, you should at least pick up the following: 7/64", 1/8", 5/16", 1/4". You'll use these a lot, and to avoid other people dulling or breaking your bits, get your own. They're cheap, and it'll save you hours of aggravation.