Month: September 2019

Mini Assignment: Interesting State Machines

MacBook Charger Light

The first state machine I found is Macbook Charger light. It shows the states of the battery – whether it is charging or charged fully – using green and orange(red) colors.

Then, I tried to find non-electric state machines.

 

Restroom Door Indicator

I thought that this state machine is interesting because it does not use any electrical energy, instead, it uses mechanical structure to change the visualizations of the state.

 

Humidifier Remain Water

In terms of showing states of the machine, I thought that the water in a transparent humidifier could be also a state machine. Water itself shows how much water is left and how long the humidifier could work.

 

Parking Balloons

It is a great example of a state machine without any mechanical or electrical engineering. Using a very simple structure – a flying balloon and a string, this system lets drivers know where is an available parking space.

Class Notes: 10 September, 2019

State machines in our world

Reactive vs. interactive state machines

Reactive state machines

  • Egg timer – set time, start, stop, reset
  • Arcade game – attract / play / reward
  • Advanced arcade games that change their offer for cost of a game

Interactive state machines

Student examples in class (post a comment if I forgot your example):

  • Murphy bed attached to lights for getting up in the morning
  • microwave that can adjust cooking time based on humidity
  • automatic systems that open blinds when sun is out to save money on lighting

Discuss how and why of state changes

What if state machines were smart(er)?  What are predictive state machines?

  • auto-aiming / target tracking — not military, self-driving cars and obstacle avoidance
  • catch a Frisbee — dogs know calculus!
  • When you order pizza you usually order beerand could make predictions?
  • You’re running low on gas, stop to refuel/recharge before you go to the grocery store

When you go from home to studio your default playlists are changed

  • Visual changes in state
  • Doppler shift in nature
  • lives / health in a video game
  • traffic slowdowns in Waze
  • intensity of light => time of day

Mini-assignment for Thursday

– Install IFTTT, look at existing apps
– Post some interesting state machines to Looking Outward

Assignment 3: Smart Kettle

Problem

Many hot prepared drinks are actually supposed to be prepared at temperatures significantly under boiling temperatures. However, when using a kettle, it is difficult to tell what temperature water is at, as the only feedback it can give is a whistling noise. Additionally, deaf and hearing impaired individuals are unable to tell when a kettle has reached boiling by listening to the whistle.

Solution

A Smart kettle that is able to keep track of the temperature of the beverage that it is holding, letting users know when to brew and drink different types of drinks.

Proof of Concept

The smart kettle would give users the ability to understand the temperature of the water that they are boiling by use of a series of different colored LEDs. For instance, red would serve as the hottest temp, denoting an appropriate temperature for making black tea or coffee,  yellow would serve as the next indicator for white tea/green tea or hot cocoa, green for drinking tea/coffee and blue for too cold. It uses an TMP36 temperature sensor to track the state of the liquid in the container.

a3_stateMachine

tempStateMachine480

A more accessible fridge

Problem: Fridges alert users when their fridge door is open by beeping loudly. For users who are hard of hearing, this is not a feasible indicator.

Solution: Fridge flashes a bright light to get the attention of the user to notify them that their fridge door is open

Proof of Concept: Using a ultrasound sensor, an LED and a SparkFun, I created a simple state machine. If the ultrasound sensor is sensing a distance of more than 20 centimeters it begins flashing the LED. Otherwise, the LED remains off.

Video :VID_20190909_231515

Fritzing and Arduino Code

Assignment 3: What to do?

As Herb Simon said:

“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

My workspace has more than enough information to constitute an overabundance, and as a result, I don’t know what to pay attention to. The most obvious culprit is the sticky note. They’re a great reminder, but once you have more than a couple of them, I don’t know which one is most urgent.

My proposed near-future solution is to embed a simple LED indicator into the post-it to indicate how long until it is due, so that at a quick glance, I can see what I should be focusing on without having to read each note and prioritize.

I would expect something like this could be feasible in the next five years with current trends in battery efficiency, low power IoT processors, the constantly lowering costs of the hardware, and the physical scale we’ve already accomplished (see image below)

I mocked this up using a potentiometer and digital input as a proxy for remaining time and status of completion:

 

notestate – Fritzing and Arduino code

Micro Wave

Simple State Machine:

A microwave has multiple states: OFF, COOKING, and DONE, ALERT USER. Part of this system is that by opening the door of the microwave, the cooking and alerting user states can be stopped.

Problem:

For those who are deaf or are hard of hearing, knowing when a microwave is done cooking is not perceived because normally the microwave beeps to notify the user.

General Solution:

A visualization means that would inform a user of the state that the microwave is in even when they aren’t watching the microwave itself.

Proof of Concept:

A Sparkfun Redboard Turbo with a potentiometer and switch. The potentiometer allows the user to control the amount of time the microwave is cooking. The switch allows the user to start and stop the microwave. In this case, the LED embedded in the Sparkfun Redboard Turbo board will be used to represent the state of the microwave.

Fritzing Sketch:

The Fritzing sketch shows diagrammatically how the Sparkfun Redboard Turbo would be connected to the potentiometer and switch. Not pictured is the LED embedded light on the actual Sparkfun Redboard that would be operated through code.

Video:

Files:

Assignment_3_Final

 

Assignment 03: SAFE SMARTPHONE CASE

Problem: 

Being distracted by a smartphone when we are walking is really dangerous. We lose our attention and we lose our sight and become “blind”.

 

General Solution:

I am going to design a smartphone case that is equipped with an ultrasonic distance sensor in front of it. It keeps tracking the surrounding while people are walking using a smartphone. When it detects an object that is closer than a certain distance, it warns the user using lights (or possibly vibration or other methods).

 

Proof of Concept:

When making a prototype, I chose red and green LEDs to visualize the warning sign. An ultrasonic distance sensor keeps paying attention to the front direction of a user while moving. When there is nothing in front of the sensor, it lights up green led and write “IT’S SAFE” on serial. When there is anything appear less than 10 cm, it lights up red led and write “WATCH OUT!” on serial.

 

Arduino Code:

SAFE_SMARTPHONE_CASE

 

Demo Video:

Assignment 3: Traffic Light For The Color Blind

Premise

I was driving a friend of mine that’s colored blind, and we stopped at a traffic light. I asked him, “how can you tell if it’s red or green or yellow?”

He said, “I usually guess. During the day I can see if the top or the bottom one is one, but at night it’s hard to tell, so I just wait and see if other people go, then I’ll go.”

I thought there must be another way to design traffic lights for the color blind, but for now, hope this solution helps.

Traffic Light Translator

The project reads which state the LED is on (red, yellow, or green), and based on that it prints on a screen the state in which the traffic light is on. Also, at the bottom it prints a countdown in seconds to how long you have left in that state.

This could also be useful to anyone, not just color blind people. For example, if something is blocking your view to the traffic light (i.e poor weather or giant truck in front of you), this display could exist in people’s cars and show you what state the traffic light is on.

For this to be implemented, there needs to be a way for the device to know which traffic light to read the state of, which I am unsure of how to do. Possibly, using GPS coordinates?

Proof of Concept

Code & Files

Alsanea_Files

Note: I did not include a schematic diagram because I used the board’s built in LED.