Power On: Electronics Prototype
HCID 521 Prototyping Studio | Week 7 | Assignment
The class had experienced two weeks of software prototyping, and this week we proceeded to hardware, to be specific, circuits. We were assigned to learn and build something from Arduino, an embedded chip that equips several built-in power outlets, sensors, and input/output pins. The topic can be whether an advanced thermometer or one chosen by our own.
KIT + SOUND METER
What most of us have got is an Arduino Uno budget kit, which is the most basic Arduino kit you can get in the market. The budget kit contains an Arduino Uno, wires, resistors, LEDs, dials, buttons, a thermometer, and a photoresistor. Besides the kit, I bought an extra sound meter online, just to create more possibilities of interaction.
DISCOVERY
At first I was only randomly playing with the sensors, in order to check out how those sensors work and how sensitive those are. There was one time while I was playing with the sound meter to control the switch of LED lights, I was trying hard to clap to see whether the input of sound meter changes or not. I accidentally blew a breath on the sound meter, and it turned out to be much more sensitive to the inhale/exhale than to average sounds. I soon decided using exhale/inhale to be my main part of interaction design.
I chose to put a fan and a ballon on the screen to display the inhale/exhale value of user. First I generated a circle in 2D space, while the sound of breath gets higher the circle gets bigger. After this, I made a spinning square to create the feel of an actual fan in 2D space, and the speed of spinning is according to the sound of exhaling/inhaling (the speed change of fan is emulated by the real world environment, which I took friction of air into consideration). As soon as I figured out how to generate a sphere in Processing, I replaced the 2D circle with a 3D sphere, with a spotlight controlled by mouse (which allows user to check out the detail of the sphere).
Visualizing activities of inhaling/exhaling can be used in supporting medical use thru equipments such as oxygen bar or asthma inhaler.
TAKEAWAY
The last time I played with these circuits was in my high school, and I have not programmed on both Arduino and Processing. Since Arduino is based on C++ (mostly the C part of C++) and Processing is based on Java, with my programming background it is relatively easier to get quick access to both languages, and get to play with it a little bit. Also, there are sufficient amount of tutorial out there in the internet, which makes both Arduino and Processing even more accessible. What surprised me the most is that Processing supports rendering basic 3D shapes, which I played with a little.
Also, by implementing some actual circuit to prototype desired functionalities, I can see how Arduino will become an useful rapid prototyping tool. I had experienced embedded system programming while in undergrad, and Arduino and Processing are definitely much easier than that. Also, by adding additional sensors and using different versions of Arduino (eq. Flora for wearable, or ones equipped with bluetooth module), Arduino and Processing allow us to implement various functionalities of design rapidly, testing without producing an exact circuit as a final product.
