Final Project & Class Reflections

Although this class was really frustrating at times, I can say I've learned a whole lot over the course of this semester. I think one of the most important things I learned to do was solder because I've come to realize that I soldering is part of my job when we do maintenance on cables and other equipment. I've yet to do any of this type of maintenance because I didn't know how to solder. Because of this class, I can do more for my job and therefore make more money. Aside from giving me an edge at my job, I've learned to be more persistent and detail-oriented. Dealing with all sorts of electronics, both big and small, there is a learning curve and getting a grasp of these things is not easy. It takes time and lots of effort to get them to do what you want them to do and correctly. Besides all the technical things, I've learned to improve upon my soft skills such as my diligence towards things and also time management because I had to put a whole lot of time to my assignments and projects.

In terms of our final project, like I said in the other post, we've come a long ways since our midterm and since we first began the class. I remember in the beginning of the semester when we were playing with LEDs. It seemed alright at first; there weren't too many LED assignments that were hard. Then as the semester progressed, things definitely got harder and harder, like Katerie said they would. I wasn't too worried till we began our midterm project. Having never done any class assignments with Twitter or Ethernet, everything was new to us and we had to learn it all on the fly pretty much by ourselves. Luckily, we got the help of Evan and Katerie to steer us in the right direction. Thanks guys. We appreciate it. For our final project, I wish we tapped into everyone's projects and also had more messages. In the beginning, we decided on 10 messages per project. But as we thought of messages, we got writers block and it became really hard to think of good messages that relate to the projects so we stuck to 7. Lucky number 7. Overall, I'm really pleased of what our project came to be from what we initially conceptualized.

Final Project Process 7 - Ryan's WAV Files

So the name of the guy whose voice we used was Ryan. He was the perfect for us and we loved how he read clearly but had a sort of sarcastic undertone when reading certain sentences. It matched the tone of some of the things we were saying and trying to get across. The site we adopted him from was fromtextospeech.com if you were curious. Kudos for Dragan stumbling upon this site. There were a bunch of voices you could choose from, both male & female, fast or slow. All you had to was type whatever you wanted spoken, choose a voice, listen and preview it to see if you like it or want to enhance it someway, then download it.

The blog won't allow me to upload any WAVS or MP3 files so each group's messages are in Dropbox. They are categorized by the name of the group, then there are the initial recorded MP3's, then the exported WAV files we used for the Waveshield.

WAV files for Obi & Dragan's project

Final Project Process 6 - The Finale

So the big day has finally come and go. I'm proud of myself and Dragan for sticking it through and pushing ourselves to get this thing right. I think we make a swell group. We made so much progress from our midterm project both artistically and conceptually. Electronics are such a pain in the ass, though. I just have to throw that out there. But it feels good when you can get them to work the way you want them to work and it shows. I really wish we had an actual house as a space because that would have really pushed our concept further. However, we made it work with the blackbox space and dividing up everyone's areas for their projects. Our project was much different from everyone else's in the sense that it wasn't an actual physical thing that was tangible. It was more of a voice than a physical apparatus and that is what I liked most about it.

Picture time!!

Our lovely welcome doormat in front of the house entrance

Under the mat was cardboard and a stack of magazines

Cut in the middle was a small rectangular opening to

stick a small black breadboard that housed our 

button, resistor, and wires going under the couch.

Closeup of the button and breadboard

Rangefinder hiding behind the plants and rocks.

I bet you did not know that was there. We tried to

hide it really good.

All of our wonderful wave shields soldered by 

us. Each wave shield held each group's messages,

which were separated and labeled by the memory cards.

The photocell sensor was placed under Miriam & Emilie's

lamp so whenever it was turned on by blowing on the candle, 

one of our messages played.

This was essentially what was under the lamp minus the LED

 and it was also on that small black breadboard instead.

Final Project Process 5 - Sensor Party

#StudioSundays - Back at it again....

So Dragan & I had a great project day Sunday. We figured out a way to kick out of the loop with the wave shield and the rangefinder to make the message not be interrupted. THIS WAS AMAZING. We also added a new sensor to the list, the photocell, to put under the lamp so as people blew on the candle to turn on the lamp, our message would play when the lightbulb sprouted on. And this would continue as each person blew on the candle and therefore, turned the lightbulb on. So for our project we had 3 different types of sensors to be tripped, 2 rangefinders, 1 photocell, and 1 button. A nice group, shall I say. I was so worried that we would not be able to get the rangefinder to work correctly with the wave shield and what do you know; not only do we get the rangefinder to work, but also the photocell to accompany the button. I love how we have progressed so much in this project since the beginning.

So here's what we needed to make all our messages not be interrupted and also play at random. There's a total of 7 messages per group, 4 groups in total. Carlota & Elexis, Kacee & Hayley, Chris & Katie, and Miriam & Elexis.

For the rangefinder, we basically had to comment out all of the conversion lines of code and the serial lines of code that print what inch is detected. Instead, we just used the pwmRange measurement, which is quite different and higher than inches and centimeters. Next we added a variable i and set it to random(7), which is saying play our 7 messages on the wave shield in a random order. I totally forgot about the random function and its use. I remembered using it back in my Processing days. Basically, if the pwmRange is less than 12,000, for every trip play a random wav. 

Final Project Process 4 - Rangefinder mess & sort of success

After almost two weeks of fiddling with the rangefinders and the wave shield before and after the Thanksgiving break, trying to make one work with the other and sometimes just trying to get the rangefinders to work, WE GOT IT! ....sort of. The rangefinder now works with the wave shield, so a message plays when it gets below a certain measurement. In our code, we set it to be less than 15 inches so it would play with any trip under that amount. The problem is that it only plays when your hand is moved away from the sensor. Put your hand over the sensor and it becomes stuck, rummaging through the same play sequence over and over and over again in an extremely fast pace that you can't hear. With Katerie's awesome help, we tried multiple things to try and kick the loop out while the message is being played such as various delays, booleans, etc. Nothing seemed to really work the way we wanted it to. We'll continue to work on this and try to find a way to stop or pause the rangefinder so the message can play in its entirety.

Look at our pretty code...

shift registers 17 and 18

project 17

project 18

Final Project Process 3 - Early Success

So on Wednesday's class Dragan & I had a divine programming revolution. Not only did we get our Waveshield working thanks to Evan's help but we even got a sample prototype up and running. What ended up being wrong with the Waveshield library was the folder that was nested in the Waveshield library folder should not have been there. The actual Waveshield library folder was nested in another folder so once we moved that individual folder into Arduino's libraries folder, everything became A-OK. Honestly, how would anyone have known that? Especially newbs like us. Anyhoo, we first ran the dap_hc example sketch successfully, which allowed us to cycle through all our test messages on our SD card in a continuous loop listening through our headphones.

After these tests, we were now ready to connect some sensors to the wave shield to act as tripping mechanisms. We decided to use buttons. We got three buttons on the long breadboard and when each button was pressed, it played a designated message from the SD card. The code for this was a bit tricky to understand and manipulate to how we wanted to use it. But eventually towards the end of class, we got it to work and showed Katerie our Waveshield triumph. She was proud of us.....*tear*

Next steps:
-Use other sensors like Ultrasonic Rangefinders
-Finalize message and put them on SD cards
-Begin placing them in the "designated" areas of the house from the blueprint Katerie drew

ch8 p23 - hello world

first ran into some issues so my display was weird and messed up 

and spitting out random characters and such

then i got it to work

Components Needed for Final

Roster of Sensors:
-buttons
-rangefinders
-photocell*
-bio-mass*

Parts

-uno(s)

-wav shield

-sensors

-breadboard

-sd cards

-aux cable

update:

using wav shields, unos, cables with 1/8 inch male plugs, and speakers.

ultrasonic ranger finder. project 38

Final Project Process 2 - The Gameplan

#StudioSundays! <-------This is what I call Sundays now.

Dragan & I met up Sunday to discuss and work on some things for our project. We started doing the Waveshield tutorial but found problems in running the example sketches from the Waveshield library called WaveHC. There were multiple lines of errors saying certain lots of code was not declared in the various scopes. This looked like an issue with the library itself because our library folder was named properly and put into the Arduino library folder. But the library didn't seem to be that old, as its last update was in 2011 for Arduino 1.0. I currently have Arduino 1.5.2 on my Mac but I don't see as to how that makes a difference because I've downloaded older libraries and those example sketches worked just fine. We'll see what happens in class Monday because we are supposed to work on wave shields and use the Adafruit tutorial, which is the one we were working with as well.

Anyhoo, we really dialed in on our messages and content, specifying the types of things we want to say and how we want to say them. These messages would be talking about the space that each group's project is housed in, how the space could have been used for something better or "the greater good" but instead turned into an art gallery. We divided up our messages by each group and their potential project combining info from what we learned from their proposals and previous project. We were thinking 5-10 messages per project. The idea is to take the space these projects are in and repurpose them towards a greater good for the people or environment.

lights that act as a "spotlight" to shine on the project the house is speaking about so our audience knows  

ex. "this 5.4 sq ft space could've been used to house a dog and prevent him from being mistreated."  --each of these messages will somehow relate to the concept of the projects taking up the space.

----------

miriam and emilee - lights and breath 

-This idea could've been used to power homes, instead it only powers an artwork.

-This space could've been used to erect a wind turbine.

katie and chris - bugs and composting

-This space could've been used for an actual composting bin.

-None of the materials used to make this work are recyclable. 

-This space could've been turned into a playground for children instead. 

-This space could've been used as a garden but now it's just filled with toy bugs.

-A shed to store old and unused items for a family would have been more beneficial.

carlota and elexis - security and protection via door and rfid

-This could've been used to protect a home with a newborn baby from intruders. Here it just makes noise.

-They could've developed affordable security systems to make the neighborhood safer.

hayley and casey - sun powered flower with no purpose

-It doesn't do anything. Some people live year round without electricity. 

-This space could be a nursery to rehabilitate plants of an endangered species.

-This space could also have been a greenhouse powered by solar panels.

anya and lindsey - grounded and curfews

-This could've been developed into an inmate tracking system. 

ollie and evan - tweeting house

-This idea could've been converted to a cheap method of home to home communication.

Final Project Proposal

http://prezi.com/gjwqlakm6hfo/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

touchscreen p33 and 35

RFID

WOO!

Final Project Process 1 - Mind Map

Project Process 5 (Johnny's House Tweets)

Project Process 4

Before we got the idea to just use a simple button as an on or off to gauge whether someone sat on the couch, we were going to use the flex sensor but we ran into weird problems with it. It worked, but it didn't work properly. The flex sensor would work opposite. Like if we bent it a certain way, the way it's supposed to be bent, it wouldn't light up. We had a red LED connected to the breadboard so we could see if it worked. It would also only read at about 1/4 of the way. The other 3/4 would not respond to Dragan pressing down upon it.

led matrix

Star of the show

   Awesome pic of our couch with the dark, cool lighting.

Thoughts about Critique

I thought that our critique was sub-par ok just because we couldn't get our sensors to work the first time around. It really didn't make any sense because we literally just tested it minutes before the crit and we got everything tweeting just fine. It was just one of these frustrating things that you couldn't put your finger on as to why it happened. However, I am glad that we decided to stick it out, even though Katerie told us about all the fails that previous students had with Twitter. We didn't let that get to us and prevailed in doing it.
 I do agree with most of the statements said during critique such as reviewing our messages that get tweet out and zooming in to only see the tweets and not any side advertisements. I'm also glad we are getting another opportunity to really revise this project and get it the way we want and try to incorporate other group's projects as well. It was unfortunate that Twitter won't allow us to have duplicate messages though. That really sucked.