Tuesday, December 5, 2018
Tonight is the night! Most students are making sure their final projects for ICM and PComp are functional technically. My final project combines both technical functions, so the project has become heavy on the coding side, working with P5 js, and using Arduino to establish serial communication between the two.
This update consists of multiple days of testing, coding and fabrication and testing again, and changing ideas, then editing soundtracks for the application. But, finally this is where we are.
1. Soldering components:
There are not many components to solder; however, I needed to make sure to prepare enough electric wire length for all the components. I simply took a guess of potential length needed and hoped it would be enough. I also shouldn't cut them too long, as it may cause certain inefficiency in the electric flow (not sure if this is true, but was told by a resident!?)
2. Coding:
I started coding in Arduino and P5 separately and testing all components individually over and over again. One of the biggest challenges was mapping values sent by the sensors and those of P5 visual and sound elements. The sensors are very sensitive and could fluctuate every time they are plugged in, and are affected by other external factors as well, so testing over and over again was necessary.
3. Fabrication:
I made a cover for my flex sensor. This will help protect the sensor from breaking, and also allow the user to interact with it more freely.
Next is a piece of fabric with interesting texture to hide the force sensor inside.
And, some more protection for the sensors...
4. Choose and edit soundtracks for sound element:
I spent a lot of time picking out music and sound effects. To make the editing process more efficient, I decided to edit all sound files in iMovie. Adobe Audition may have been a better choice; however, more the interest of time, it worked well enough.
5. Combine all codes:
The reason why I saved a whole step for this individual task is because it is such a big and important step. Combing codes from different sources could cause errors if codes are placed incorrectly. In this case, everything is combined in P5 js.
6. User Test:
This is a video of a quick first round user test.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoSbn_N-rk4
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