We live in an era of constant monitoring and electronic intervention. Mobile technologies have enabled fast computing on our persons in all aspects of our lives including, education, biometric monitoring, social media correspondence, and much more. With this in mind we approach our final project with a focus on wearable devices, biometric monitoring, fitness tracking, and any other type of on-body sensing or actuation. This may include VR/AR, watches, e-textiles, etc. The focus of this proposal is not to describe perfectly how build your project, but how a user would interact with it. Consider this an exercise in describing an experience not a technology. The proposal will be in the form of a short video (between 15 and 30 seconds), and may use live action, stop-motion, animation, or any other technique to describe your proposed experience. You have only two days to generate this video so the focus is on the idea more than the craft of the video. A rough animation of a great idea will be more convincing than a polished less developed proposal. You will work alone and we will break into teams of two on Thursday to move forward. Good luck!

Make a blog post documenting your project.

DELIVERABLES

• A 30-60 second video of your project in action
• A (well-linked) writeup of your design process, including:
  • The genesis of your idea
  • The technologies used to make it happen
  • Diagrams, photos, and sketches of your progress along the way
  • Link to a Github repo or gist containing your code
  • References to any external libraries or inspiration
  • Your thoughts about what you’ve learned, and where this project could go in the future
• Ensure the blog post is correctly titled and categorized

Make a sensor from a microphone that measures/detects an environmental condition that is not an audio source. You must convert some other physical energy (displacement, light, electricity, heat) to sound to be sensed by your microphone :

DETAILS

The first week of the project will be follow these steps:

1) Identify the source that you are converting to audio. This may be a human interaction like a button push, or it may be an environmental condition such as wind speed or temperature. For the sake of describing an approach we will use a button press as our example input in the style of Valkyrie Savage’s Lamello.

2) Convert the energy into sound. For the button press I would take the following steps, create a set of tines that get plucked as the button is depressed (see this video of a finger piano), connect those tines to a resonant chamber, and place an electret microphone in or on the chamber.

3)Transform your incoming signal to the frequency domain using an FFT to gain visual confirmation that you can differentiate the signal from noise.

Projects

• Acoustic Barcodes
• Lamello
• Acoustruments
• SpectraScreen
• Scratch Input
• Floor has a voice

Tutorials

• Jesse Stiles DSP tutorials for Max (particularly chapter 08 and 09)
• FFT
• Paul Bourke’s Post on DFT and FFT
• Adafruit Electret Microphone

Base Code

• Photon fft/tcp
• Processing tcp example

DELIVERABLES

The initial prototype is due Thursday, February 4th.

A working mechanism with the associated FFT displayed on your laptop is required.

Banner image is from Daniel Sierra’s Oscillate

You will then make a blog post of your discoveries, following the format below:

IMAGE:  You will begin your post with an image of your chosen project. Images must be at least 756 pixels wide, and must be linked to the full-size image.

TEXT: Here you will provide text in the format specified below.

• EXPLAINED: Explain the project in less than 160 characters.
• CHOSEN: Why did you choose this project?
• CRITIQUED: What did the designer do well? What did they do poorly? What would you change?
• RELATED: Where did the project come from? What informed it, and what does it inform? What is its family tree?

LINK: Please post a linked URL of the project here.

VIDEO (OPTIONAL): If there is a youtube or vimeo video, please link embed it here.

Repeat these steps three times!

Each post should contain THREE relevant projects. Projects you write about should be projects you’ve newly discovered while doing this research, i.e., projects you haven’t come across before (though feel free to add those to your post beyond the three).

Make a wheeled robot that completes a challenge on a whiteboard table. Your team may choose from one of the challenges below:

Normal Challenge

• Solve a Maze
  • bonus: make it draw the maze first
• Draw an algorithmic pattern [S+A]
  • bonus: make a multi-color changer
• Keep the table clean of marks and debris
  • bonus: do it with CV and an external camera
• Trace objects placed on the table
  • bonus: color them in when the object is removed

Hard Challenge

• Two Sumo Bots [D+J]
  • bonus: make them controlled by a phone/remote control
• Draw a clock
  • bonus: make it an analog clock
• Draw a face from a vector image
  • bonus: draw from a photograph/video
• Draw from your phone
  • bonus: make a website anyone can draw from

DETAILS

This is a fast and dirty project which will give you guys the opportunity to program your Photon boards, design physical mechanisms, utilize the tools available in IDeATe, and build with available hardware. We don’t expect these prototypes to be pretty. This project is about the process and the focus should be on functionality and simplicity. You only have a couple of weeks and a lot to learn.

You will work in teams of 2 (may have one team of 3 if there is an odd number). We will assign groups based on the course survey and discussions in class. Your team will select a robot type from the list above and get cranking. We will provide examples of DC motors, servos, stepper motors, ultrasonic depth sensors, photoresistors, etc.

Some example projects are listed below for inspiration and instruction (we will add to this list as you guys find more useful examples):

Projects

• Whiteboard Clock
• Piccolo

Tutorials

• Whiteboard Erasing Robot
• Drawing Robot I
• Drawing Robot II

Commercially Available

• mDrawbot
• Doodlebot
• EggBot
• RedBot
• 3pi

DELIVERABLES

The final (working) prototype is due Tuesday, January 26th.

In addition, a blog post including the following is due 1/26, as well:

• Process documentation: images/drawings
• Write-up: Abstract/Related Work/Implementation/Discussion
• 30 second video: shot on tripod/edited

The purpose of this assignment is to ensure all students are familiarized with the PhysComp lab and the primary computational tools used for the duration of the course.

DELIVERABLES

1. If you haven’t already, sign up for the Github Education Pack
2. If you’re new to Git/Github, try these challenges
3. Install Node.js on your computer, either via a direct download or a package manager.
4. Test your install by typing npm -v into Terminal. If it responds with a number (like 3.3.12), you’re good to go.
5. Install the Particle CLI with
   

   npm install -g particle-cli

6. You may need to run as sudo if you get install errors.
7. Use
   

   particle setup

   
   to create a new Particle account (or login, if you’ve already made one).
8. Once you’ve made an account or logged in, press Control-c to exit the prompt. IMPORTANT: Do not continue onto further steps in the wizard.
9. Plug your Photon into your computer, and when it begins blinking blue, use
   

   particle serial mac

   
   to get the Photon’s MAC address. Copy this to your clipboard.
10. Sign your Photon’s MAC address up on NetReg
    1. Login
    2. Click “Register New Machine”
    3. Under “Select the Network”, select “Legacy Wireless Network”, then continue
    4. Under “Hostname”, type in a unique identifier for your Photon. For example, I called mine MARS-Photon
    5. Under “Hardware Address”, paste your MAC address from the CLI tool
    6. Under “Affiliation” select your university affiliation, then continue
    7. IMPORTANT: Wait at least 30 minutes or so for the network to do its thing. If you’re running into trouble connecting in the next step, wait a little longer. It can sometimes take more than an hour.
11. Download the Particle App from on your iPhone or Android device, and follow the onboarding procedure to get your Photon up and running. Detailed instructions can be found here.
    1. Be aware that you can’t use CMU-SECURE with the Photon. Everything must be done with CMU. You might want to register your personal computer and phone with CMU as well, to make the setup run a little more smoothly.
12. Complete the GETTING STARTED tutorial (at least sections 4-7) within the Particle Docs.
13. Come to class having completed “Make a Motion Detector: Publish and the Dashboard”. You should have the circuit assembled, and the demo code flashed to the Photon (and working). Bonus points for putting your own spin on the demo setup (maybe hook it up to IFTTT, or if you’re working with a partner try “The Buddy System: Publish and Subscribe”).