Final Project Progress Update

As of right now, the Tilt Maze project is set up for the most part, with minor tinkering that has to be done.  We have most of the code finished.  I'd say it's about 85% done and the physical maze is at about 90-95% completion, with a couple minor adjustments that need to be made.
I've posted a few progress pictures up and I'll post the code when we are finished.

http://i.imgur.com/8VUrF.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/OdMLe.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/HEEqa.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/ZY8kx.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/YKl7q.jpg

Media Controller Project

Media Controller Project - By Anthony Coppola and Mike Johnston

Controller guided Servo Tilt Maze

What We Did : For our project, myself and Mike embarked to create a maze game that would replicate the angle of a small controller using servo's underneath the maze itself.  We would connect tilt sensors to the inside of the controller, and it would then send the information to the arduino to tell the servo's which direction to go.  The servo's would act as a balancing mechanism as well as a tilt controller for the maze.

How we did it : We used a small, light wooden box from Micheal's, the arduino, a breadboard, some tilt sensors from Adafruit, rubber balls and a PSP tin from a party store, rubber tubing, a steel rod, and hanger nails from Ewing Hardware, and some wood from Home dept.  We used the bottom portion of the box as housing, and the cover as the actual maze, we connected the servo's to the rod , and then that to the rubber ball which acted as a ball and socket joint for the maze.  We then attached the tilt sensors to the PSP tin, connected that to the arduino, connected the arduino to the servos, and with the generous help of the fantastic people in class including our teacher Avani, we were able to write the code to get the sensors "talk" to the servo's.

What we learned : All in all, it was a fun project conceptually, but it was very challenging to us.  We unfortunately did not get it to work in time for the presentation, but we learned a ton about servo's and prototyping.  It was an enjoyable project with a lot of potential and I know that with more time, some more resources and energy, we could have submitted this to the art gallery.



Here is the code from our project

//Tilt maze by Ant C and Mike J
#include <Servo.h>

int tiltPinX = 7;                 // Gravity switch connected to pin 6
int tiltPinY = 6;              // Other gravity switch connected to pin 7

int posX = 0;
int posY = 0;

Servo servoX;
Servo servoY;

int valX = 0;
int valY = 0;

int count = 0;

void setup()
{
  servoX.attach(10);  //attaches servo 1 to digital pin 10
  servoY.attach(11);  //attaches servo 2 to digital pin 11
  count++;
 
  pinMode(tiltPinX, INPUT);  //intialize tilt sensor 1
  pinMode(tiltPinY, INPUT);  //intialize tilt sensor 2
 
 // Serial.begin(9600); //sets up serial monitor for 9600 baud
}

void loop()
{
  valX = digitalRead(tiltPinX);  //reads tilt sensor 1
  valY = digitalRead(tiltPinY); //reads tilt sensor 2
 
//  Serial. println (" Value of tilt sensor X: " + valX); //displays tilt sensor X in serial monitor
//  Serial. println(" Value of tilt sensor Y: " + valY);  //displays tilt sensor Y in serial monitor
 
  if(valX == LOW)
  {
    posX = 0;
    servoX.write(-15);
    delay(15);
    count = 0;
  } else
  {
    count = 0;
   for(posX = 0; posX <45; posX++)
    {
     servoX.write(15);
     delay(15);
    }
  }
 
  if(valY == LOW)
  {
    posY = 0;
    servoY.write(-15);
    delay(15);
    count = 0;
  } else
  {
    count = 0;
    for(posY = 0; posY <45; posY++)
    {
     servoY.write(15);
     delay(15);
    }
  }
 
  if(count == 8000)
  {
    servoX.write(0);
    servoY.write(0);
  }
 
}

Data Viz Show

I recently went to visit the IMM gallery's show and I was pleasantly surprised at what I found.  When I walked in, I saw a wide range of different art pieces ranging from typical drawings to clever forms of expression that are quite modern and unusual in a gallery.  The one that stuck out is the bot-controlled Counter-Strike game in which every time a player dies, a bit of red blood shoots out of a nozzle to simulate the killing in a much more real sense.  By the time I went to the gallery, the wall and floor had been soaked in red blood.  Next to the blood was a large pile of small pieces of paper that had various twitter feeds printed on it.  I was told that on the first day, the rate that the paper was going would envelop the whole room so the artist had to adjust the feed to make it write less.  These two are perfect examples of how even when you think a project it done, minor and sometimes even major tweaking is never out of the question and very possible after submission of a final product.  The gallery as a whole was fascinating and a very insightful experience in my opinion, and I would like to see more of these in the upcoming future.

Physical Computing's Greatest Hits

http://www.tigoe.net/blog/category/physicalcomputing/176/
This reading is based on Tom Igoe's blog post about Physical Computing's Greatest Hits. While reading this, I noticed a bunch of new cool gadgets and inventions that were very intriguing to me, specifically the gloves and the multi-touch interfaces.  For my stupid pet trick, I attempted to create a wearable project, and to my dismay, it was a bit out of my league in terms of creation, implementation, and actually making  it work was a pain in it self.  But I learned a good amount of stuff from trying new things and I was especially excited to read through this.  The multi-touch interfaces have also been something that I have always wanted to see and try out, but never had the chance to.  I know that Microsoft released a prototype sometime last year with an outrageous estimate, so I know that mass market production won't happen for some time, but it's still something to look forward to.  All in all, this was a good read with many very cool and neat ideas that I will definitely try to implement in my final project.

HotPot Rotary Potentiometer Presentation

For my sensor presentation, I chose the HotPot Rotary Potentiometer.  It is a sensor that had a force sensitive ring that detects position.  Although it looks very similar to the iPod scroll wheel, it is not the same type of sensor.  It is used is a few various well known objects like joysticks and electric guitars.

Bent Wire Crank Toy

For this project, we had to get wire, I picked up 14 AWG wire because it seems the most stable while also being able to bend easily, and by following the guide in Make magazine, we would be able to make a wire crank toy that had a bird dip its head.  Once I assembled the parts and started cutting the wire, I noticed first that the measurements on the guide were either way off, or meant for tiny hands.  Either way, I doubled what was said in the guide and it worked out a bit better.  However, once I got to the coil, I found a bit of difficulty.  It was not very simple to bend and it took quite a while to get a shape that vaguely resembled a coil structure.  After about 10 minutes of struggling, I finally accepted the coil-esque shape and moved on.  I delicately pieced out the other shapes needed to create the toy, and I had a better outcome than I originally thought.  It wasn't how it looked in the picture, but it was a passable recreation.  After doing this project, I feel that given the right tools, I would definitely be able to do another project like this, as I have learned some tricks and methods of what works and what does not.

Toy Paper Monster

I have seen and made my fair share of paper toy monsters/characters, and I can safely say that there are few things that compare to the simplicity and magic when it comes to paper-craft.  With the right instructions, after about and hour, you'll have a crazy, cartoonish, fun toy/model that started out as a piece of paper.  It is one of the simplest form of creation.  And the only tools are the paper, instructions, glue and imagination.  I wish we had these when I was growing up because these spark so much creativity within children that it's impossible to not love them.  The character that I made was called the doctor.  It's a green scientist with a big head and six arms.  After about 30-35 minutes of gluing and sticking I had a finished product.  It was a fun exercise and I hope we can more exercises like this one.