Circuit with switch and LED's in series.
Physical Computing Journal
Gloria Sed
lab1/ lab2 / lab3(5) / midterm
/ lab7 / tech research /
final
Lab
1: Basic Circuit
2/3/04
Hope
I don't get shocked 101..
Circuit with switch and LED's in series.
Mistake #1: I didn't
push one of the wires far down into the bread board
so it was not making proper contact.
Mistake # 2: I thought
that each item had ato go to ground.
I ended up with one light much brighter than the other, a regulator that was
really hot,
and a power adapter on the way to becoming damaged because I had my switch going
directly to ground.
*Thanks to Michael Schneider for catching my faux pas and reviewing the difference
between parallel and series.
Circuit with flex sensor.
Soldering was a bitch! The "helping hands"
from the ER were in bad shape.
It was difficult to lines things up. I ended up needing some real helping hands,
those of
ITP workstudy, Vanessa.
Success: It all worked out and I didn't get shocked!
Circuit with flex sensor.
Lab 2: Digital Input and Output using the Microcontroller
2/18/04
Be careful what you PIC
Pic programmed to blink led's in sequence.
I actually had programmed this correctly but couldn't get it to work
for stupid reasons. I didn't have the ground cord from the power supply going
to the ground of the regulator. I also did not have the resitor coming out of
the
memory reset, in the correct place. Mark helped me figure this out and also
showed me how to place an led to show me that at least it is getting power.
(see yellow led above)
Pic with button input.
I programmed this I don't know how many times. The problem ended up
being with the computers I was using and not with my code. I'll have to stick
to the one machine I know works with the software.
Pic with 3 switch combination.
I created three switches that close when you hand keys
on the hooks.
If all three keys are on their coresponding hook then the green les light up,
otherwise the red led lights up.
Stupid me did not take care to separate the legs of the
led. So after hours of
soldering I had to cut them and resolder all the leds this time taking care
to put
plastic over the "legs" so they wouldn't touch.
After this it still didn't work. I keep having this conceptional
problem of wanting
to put all my black wires directly to ground.
Michael had to explain how the electricity flows from the pic to the switches.
Switches properly connected (pins on the right).
Finally working! I do however need to adjuct my code so that the red led turns
off when the three switches are activated and all three green lights turn on.
CODE
Front of piece.
Detail of switch.
Lab 3 (5): Variables and Analog Input (w/ Serial Output)
3/03/04
What the VAR?
Analog in using potentiometer. Serial out to hyperterminal.
Be careful of smoking pot! I tried to use a found potentiometer
and it turned
out the person had soldered their wires wrong. Long story short...
my pot started smoking.
Once I chaged the pot the circuit was working well.
In HyperTerm returning values of 0-1023.
Analog in using flex sensor. Serial out to hyperterminal.
In HyperTerm with a 10k resistor returning values in
the aprox. range of
70-520 (200-450 being the most consistent.)
(With a 220k resistor it returned 0 and without a resister it returned 1023.)
Analog in using flex sensor to control lighting the LED's.
Woohoo...exciting!
Using variable to remember how many times the switch has
been pressed.
Overall I did pretty well on this lab. Things were working.
This lab had many parts and took me forever. I had to take the
day off from work!
3/9/04
How
many monkeys before I go bananas?
How many monkeys? Midterm Project
This is a very rough prototype for a counting game.
When a monkey is dropped in the tube it triggers a switch and an LED is lit.
Once all 10 monkeys are in and all 10 LED's lit, all the LED's blink.
If I were to continue working on this project I would add some monkey sounds
and also a way to reset the game.
Midterm Project
The board is really busy. I should have given the LED's
a comon ground.
The coding ended up being a lot more complicated than I had anticipated.
I finally got it to work were it was reading the switch only once each time
pressed and remebering how many times it had been pressed. The only
problem now is that the very first time the switch is pressed it does not
start the count. The second time it is pressed is when it lights up the first
LED
and then it increments. CODE
Midterm Project
Originally I had created my own switch using wire window
screening material.
It was too sensitive. I decided on the switch above that I found at Radioshack.
It flips back up once released. I need to enclose it in the piece in such a
way
that there is no way to get a monkey in without pressing the switch.
Midterm Paper
LeapFrog: Interactive Learning
Lab 7: Talking to a MIDI device
3/29/04
MIDI mane
Connecting to MIDI
The most challenging part of this lab was wiring the
board correctly. This
would not work with the standard crystal it requires a 20 MHz clock.
So we had to replace that with a powered oscilator to get a fast and
reliable clock. Note that when using an oscilator you have to change
your settings in the EPIC window from XS to HS (EPIC Win /
View Configurations / Oscilator / HS).
MIDI Lab: board
MIDI Lab: close up
MIDI Lab: detail of transistor with resistors also detail
of oscilator and hex inverter
I followed the sample code and it worked well. I would
like to take this further
and make a project where I embed flex sensors into braids of my hair
and acheive MIDI sounds when I twirl my braids. CODE
Tech Research : Track Them Colors
For our tech research we used a video camera as a sensor and Danny's
Track Them Colors Xtra for Director. The result was that in the Director
movie the monkey would follow the passerby.
Note that the lingo is slightly different for each version of Track Them.
So don't assume that an older example can be used in the newest version.
4/27/04
Your
body and mine...
Jenny wearing the inflatable body form. (OUTPUT device)
I constructed the suit out of thin ply plastic (painter's
drop cloth). It is sewn
and enclosed with velco, elastic and rubber bands. This material is good for
inflating because it is so light weight. It is however, a pain to sewn as it
wants
to gather and tear when sewing. Also pulling apart the velco causes it to
tear. Originally I wanted to use latex but there were concerns about the
weight of the material. I still plan to try creat a "body" by doing
a mold
of my body and casting it with a thin, brush on latex. I will research ways
to create a greater force of air given our circuit voltage.
Scale with FSR strips and circuit bord using relay to
control blow dryer.
(INPUT device)
When a person steps on the scale the average of the two
FSR's is taken and
the value is used to determine how long the dryer is on. After "x"
seconds it
will shut off. The result is that the body form will inflate in relationship
to the
interactor's "weight".
Final Project circuit board.
The coding was a challenge! Thanks to Mark, Michael,
and Tom for guiding me
along. It finally worked however I need to do more testing and correct the values
so that the difference in time is more evident and the size of the body form
shows
a greater range of change. One unexpected thing I encountered is that the heavier
a
person is the lower the value that the FSR's give. I had to change my equation
to
subtract the FSR's average from 1024 inorder to get a corresponding value.
Deatil of board with relay #.
Tom and I had tried several relay switches and none of
them worked. I ordered
this DC to AC relay (CRYDOM CX240D5R) from DigiKey and it worked perfectly!
CODE