Welcome to my class! This is our class home where I’ll be updating resources and notes from our class meetings. This is also where your class blogs will live so we can see each other’s class work.
Class Times
Thursdays, 9:00 AM – 11:30 AM NYC time (GMT-4, until Nov. 1, then GMT-5)
Contacting Me
Book office hours with me on my calendar. I will schedule regular office hour appointment slots which you can book automatically once the semester starts. You’ll need to sign in with your NYU login to see it.
Feel free to email me at ys2643@nyu.edu if you have any questions or things you want to talk about.
Learning Support
- Office Hours with me
- Physical Computing Help Sessions by ITP Residents
- Every Monday 9AM
- More info should be sent to your NYU email, from the residents
- Office Hours with residents, especially following residents are specialized in physical computing: Arnab A Chakravarty, Ashley Jane Lewis, Nuntinee Tansrisakul, August Luhrs
- Find their available slots on the ITP Help Page
How Class Will Be Run
The most valuable thing we can do when we are in person or online in a class meeting together is to discuss and practice the subject that you’re learning. Any “lecture material” is on this site in video or written form, and assigned for the weeks where we will discuss it. I will expect that you’ve done the readings or watched the videos and tried the lab exercises assigned in advance of each class, and are coming to the class meetings with questions. Class meetings will be mainly discussions and shared demonstrations or experiments, not lectures. Use class time to get me or your classmates to clarify things you didn’t understand from the assigned material.
It’s okay if you couldn’t get a lab exercise or a project to work. When that happens, try to debug it, explain what you did in your blog, and come to class prepared to talk about the details and ask specific questions. Pay attention to your classmates’ work and their questions; quite often, they’ll be asking the same thing as you.
When class meetings are conducted online, I might record the Zoom meetings, if it is useful to the class and if all students consent. We will pause the recording when the discussion needs more privacy, and I will share the recording links only with our class, and set them to expire after the semester. If a question comes up in class or in online office hour meetings that is broadly useful, I may ask you if we can record the answer for others. Your comfort and consent are important, however, so please let me know if you have concerns.
Class Tools
Since this class will be meeting remotely via Zoom this semester, there are a few other tools I’ll be using that you might want to get familiar with:
NYU Google App suite – you’ll need to know these for most of NYU interaction. You have access to the whole suite through your NYU account. Search for NYU Drive. We’ll use mail, calendar, docs, sheets, drive, and slides.
Zoom – Check out Zoom tutorials and resources by NYU.
Class Blogs
Your blogs will be linked here.
- Duncan Figurski
- Yiran Wang / Marcel
- Rui Shang
- Jason Gao
- Kseniya Balaenkova / Kseniia / Kay
- Yilin Zou
- Wendy Wang
- Zhaozhi Liu
- Esther Zhang
- Gracia Zhang
- Jiayuan Li
- Jingyuan Li
- Sara Ro
- Jeeyoon Hyun
- Minyoung Bang
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Notes/Links from Class Meetings
Week 1
Class Recording – log-in with your account and enter the password.
- My work on my website
- Intro Slides – We’ll go over the rest next week
- Fantasy Project – Each group will present for 1 min next week
- Switch example: Tilt the Lamp
- Places to see physical computing related projects:
- Creative Applications (focused on art projects)
- Arduino-based projects on MAKE (focused on design/diy projects)
- Physical Computing projects @ITP
Week 2
Class Recording – log-in with your account and enter the password.
- LED Current video (different colors require different amounts of voltage to turn on)
- Twisting wire with drill
- Documenting circuits
- Downloading Fritzing for free (thanks, Jason)
- Tinkercad which has circuit simulation feature
- Arduino pinouts: this should be handy when you do Arduino labs.
Week 3
Class Recording – log-in with your account and enter the password.
- Arduino code we looked at in class on GitHub
- The code demonstrated using a set of digital input/output and a set of analog input/output
- Creative document cameras, which can be useful for your office hours and documentation
- Resources for the first production assignment
- Prototyping Methods and Tips
- Videos about sensors (if you feel ambitious..)
- Just some of physical computing projects using digital/analog input/output:
- Digital Trumpet by Dylan (great example of fabrication using cardboard)
- Be Flawless by Sohaila Mosbeh (potentiometer – servo motor, LED)
- Spooky Spiders by Ashwita Palekar (distance sensor – servo motor)
- Liquid Light by Yeseul Song, Jeff Park (gyro sensor – LED strip)
- Zimoun’s work
- Perfect housewife (4:00)
- Pairs for this week: Duncan-Esther, Yiran-Jeeyoon, Rui-Gracia-Minyoung, Jason-Jiayuan, Kay-Sara, Yilin-Zhaozhi, Wendy-Jingyuan
Week 4
- Pcomp Help Sessions: Mondays from 6.30PM to 8PM ET (Zoom link)
- Nerd Night (every Tuesday 7PM to 9PM ET) – discord invite
- Our own Discord channel
- How to solder (the video is great)
- Midterm idea feed shared doc from the class
Week 5
- Amazing work everyone you Project #1 ❤️
- Collaborative project feedback google doc
Assignment Details
- Sensor assignment:
- 1. Review this week’s sensor materials on the class website
- 2. Find a sensor that you’re interested from the materials, or places like Sparkfun, Sensor Workshop at ITP, or electronic stores you’re familiar with.
- 3. Ideally, get the sensor, read the data sheet carefully, and try it out. If you can’t get it, do research online.
- 4. Write a blog post with these items:
- What does the sensor do?
- How does the sensor work?
- What are possible applications of the sensor?
- Your project idea using the sensor?
- Your experience trying out the sensor (if you did)
- Pair for this week (Your feedback mate from last week):
- Meet with your partner to get to know them and chat more about your Project #1. Also, see what are sensors that your partner’s choosing.
- Sara – Duncan / Jason – Kay / Marcel – Rui / Yilin, Zhaozhi – Wendy / Esther – Gracia / Jiayuan – Jingyuan / Jeeyoon – Minyoung
Week 6
Serial communication pair for this week:
- Try this week’s serial communications labs and meet with your partner to chat about how it went, to share relevant projects you saw, or project ideas for serial communication.
- Duncan – Yiran (Marcel) – Yilin / Esther – Wendy / Jason – Minyoung / Rui – Kay / Sara – Gracia / Jeeyoon – Jiayuan / Zhaozhi – Jingyuan
Week 7
Serial communication slides & examples codes
If you want to collaborate on the Project #2 but don’t have a partner, email me I’ll match you up.
Week 8
Please fill out the class survey! (see your email)
Parts to get for this week’s lab
- I2C Sensor: Choose between APDS-9960 (Gesture, color, proximity) and TMP temperature sensor
- SPI part: Choose between SD card reader and digital potentiometer
Parts to get for future sessions
- Motor Lab (essential)
- motor driver
- dc motor
- stepper motor or if you want a bigger/stronger one
- 12V DC power supply (or matching voltage to your stepper motor)
- DC jack
- High current lab (Optional, get them if you want to control a higher voltage device like 12V lamp. See this lab.)
- TIP120 transistor or FQP30N06L N-channel MOSFET
- Diodes. Shown here are 1N400x power diodes.
- Capacitor (100-microfarad)
- It’s also a good time to look at “Advanced lists for later in the semester” on this Parts and Tools page
Week 9
- Connecting two Arduinos using I2C
- Interrupt
- Programming ATTINY video by Tom and Jeff
- APDS9960 enclosure making to get more accurate RGB values (and other values too)
Week 10
Project #2 feedback from the class
Week 11
Project Planning: watch the video!
- Mechanism Resources
- If you want to explore physical computing projects from previous classes: