Jeff Feddersen Fall 2019

Welcome

Welcome! I’m very excited to be teaching Physical Computing again this year. It’s material I love and use a lot. In the past few years there’s been an explosion in tools available to beginners for embedding computation in any imaginable project. It can be a bit overwhelming – electronics! programming! so many boards to choose from! – but this course lays a foundation for you to build amazing things and continue developing creative and technical skills in the future.

Class Times

Thursdays, 9:00-11:30AM, Room 408

Contact

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

Class Date Exceptions

None planned

Office Hours

My office hour calendar

I have calendar slots available to meet in person on Wednesdays and Thursdays, the days 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. I’ve found that video meetings work well for physical computing, 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.

Useful links

• Arduino Language Reference – code with this open
• The Nano 33 IOT page – useful for the pin functions in the Technical Spec. Getting started guide walks through board and driver installation.
• This image since the board didn’t label it’s pins (on top)!

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:

1. 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.
2. 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 Documentation

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. While you’re not strictly required to post an update every single week, it is very helpful to post regularly so I can keep track of how you’re doing in the class. If I see an issue come up for multiple students we can make time to address it in the class.

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!

Your Blogs

I’ll add you links here…

Abby Lee
Ben Moll
Christina Dacanay
Chun Song
Daniel Otero Sendas
Lizzy (Elizabeth) Chiappini
Elizabeth Perez
Hanyi Zhang
Julian Mathews
Melissa Powers
Rae (Ruilin) Huang
Sam Krystal
Schuyler DeVos
Shannel Doshi
Simone Salvo
Tianxu Zhou
Caren (Wenqing) Ye
Yiting Liu

Class notes

I’ll post materials from in class here. You can access Google Slides with your NYU account. Presentation material from class is meant to be presented in person by me, so is not necessarily made to stand alone as a reference. It’s included here in case it can be of any use at all.

Class 1 slides (we didn’t get all the way though in class)

Class 3 board shown below. Note that the schematic shows the functional aspects of the circuit, but may differ from the physical layout. This is usually the case – schematics are not arranged the same as physical circuits. The colored boxes highlight which part of the schematic goes with which part of the board.

TinkerCad is a virtual circuit builder and simulator from Autodesk.