Jeff Feddersen Fall 2018 – ITP Physical Computing

Welcome

Welcome! I’m very excited to be teaching Physical Computing again this year. It’s material I love (and use) and I think now (2018ish) is a great time to be learning it: there’s never been more tools, opportunities, and interest in the subject.

A recent green pedestrian walkway between buildings in Shenzhen, China. Each building contains hundreds or thousands of small electronics businesses.

Tom Igoe shops for electronic components in Shenzhen, China.

This page will archive the specifics of our section of the course. Your class documentation links will live here, as well as any week-to-week notes that come up in our particular class. The rest of the physical computing site is shared across all sections of the course. Weekly assignments and technical resources will come from there.

Class Times

AM Class

Thursdays, 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM in Room 447

PM Class

Thursdays, 12:10 PM to 2:40 PM in Room 447

Contact

jeff.feddersen@nyu.edu, jfeddersen@gmail.com

Office Hours

My office hour calendar

I have calendar slots available to meet in person on the day I teach. Please sign up at least an hour in advance, as I don’t work at ITP full time and may not stick around if nothing is scheduled.

I am also available by Skype/hangout/chat/email/call etc. almost any time with prior arrangement. In the past, I’ve found that regular office hours were under-used, and most contact with students outside of class ended up being via email, or increasingly, via video chat anyway. So, my office hour policy is to make arrangements as needed. Email me and we can set up a time to talk further. On the occasions I can be on the floor outside of class times, I’ll email the class list to let you know.

Class Date Exceptions

Class 12, originally scheduled for November 29, will now be held on Monday, December 3rd. I will hold an open session from 9 to 2:40, covering the synchronous serial material at 10 and 1. The rest of the time will be an open lab and chance to meet with students.

The syllabus has a very useful schedule overview.

A note on how to use this site

There’s a lot, lot! of information at itp.nyu.edu/physcomp. Then there’s the whole rest of the internet, starting with Arduino HQ, going on to great sites like learn.adafruit.com and learn.sparkfun.com, not to mention infinite how-tos on YouTube (even Vimeo), data sheets for every component ever made, etc… It can get overwhelming.

With the ITP site, we’ve tried to do two things:

Provide a week-by-week syllabus for the semester that takes you through the physical computing material in a logical progression. Each week has clear tasks, assignments for the following week, and links to labs, write-ups, and videos that support or explain the current material. Follow along here and you’ll be fine.
Provide an organized set of materials covering the core physical computing topics, to serve as a first resource for any questions you may have as you study the subject. These live under the Topics, Videos, Resources, and Labs tabs. These materials are also linked to from the syllabus, but here they’re organized by subject matter, whereas the week-by-week syllabus is chronological.

Class Blogs

You’ll keep a blog online with documentation of your work for the class. This will include midterm and final documentation, responses to specific prompts in the syllabus, and periodic updates on lab work.

Email me with direct links to your documentation for this class. Note: please set up tags, categories, or whatever so the link goes directly to the documentation specifically for this class, and not every class, or your personal blog, etc.

You’ll know I got your link when it shows up here!