Tuesdays, 3:20-5:50PM
9/3/2024 – 12/10/2024
Welcome
Welcome! I’m very excited to be teaching Physical Computing again this year. It’s material I love and use a lot. I created and teach two other courses in the Physical Computing Area: Energy and Time. I’m curious about every aspect of how things are made – how materials can be shaped into useful and beautiful forms, how sensors can perceive the world, how code can be crafted to run on processors and affect the world.
Recently there’s been an explosion in tools available to beginners for embedding computation into just about any project imaginable. 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 now and continue developing creative and technical skills over a lifetime.
Contact
This is my NYU office hours calendar. You’ll need to sign in with your NYU login to see it. I will schedule regular office hour appointment slots which you can book automatically once the semester starts.
My email: jeff@fddrsn.net, jeff.feddersen@nyu.edu (or jf543@nyu.edu)
Outside of office hours, email me and we can discuss issues and find a time to connect if necessary. For Fall 2024, I will be at ITP Mondays and Tuesdays most of the day, teaching in the evening/afternoon. I will have a desk space in the North area, and I’m happy to talk when I’m at ITP. I’m also glad to find times to connect over video outside those days or scheduled office hours. That said, I don’t work full time at NYU, and try to keep “normal” business hours balanced with other work and life.
For more support, the residents and other professors keep office hours as well, here; and watch for the weekly resident pcomp support sessions starting Monday 9/9.
Class Blogs
You will document your work in this class online, typically through a blog, Notion, or similar. Please add a link to your documentation site to our shared class spreadsheet before Class 2. Note – set up a category/menu for this class and submit the link for that category, not to your whole blog.
Useful links
- The week-by-week syllabus. When in doubt, check here.
- 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 its 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:
- 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 Notes
Class 1 slides
Class 2 Slides
Class 3 Slides
Class 4 Slides
Class 8 Slides
Basic P5 serial template used in class