Week 10
Kate's Physical Computing Journal
Some Thoughts on the 10th week of Physical Computing....
I was looking at some sketches I made before I came into the program. What surprised me was that the ideas were actually pretty good. Without any knowledge of what was possible or not possible to create my mind was free to be inventive. I went and looked at some books on Leonardo da vinci (angered at myself because I went to an exhibit of his drawings in Victoria BC and failed to really take advantage of what I was seeing). I thought his drawings were beautiful. Looking at them is like seeing a mind at work. His sense of curiosity was unbelievable. I think I'm going to go back to keeping a written record of my ideas. Somehow the pen and paper lead me to paths the keyboard never has.
http://www.mos.org/leonardo/museum.html
After reading some books at the library about Leonardo da Vinci I looked on the web and found the website for the museum exibit I went to in 1997. I think it is interesting for two reasons. One because it is a well done website and the second because the Leonardo was doing the things that we are doing here. He was inventing as well as creating art. I began to think about how someone like him would work in a program like this. This is one of the few artists who are known for using machines. I don't doubt that many artists did but for the most part this is swept under the carpet in lieu of looking at techniques. If you ever get into that "technology is not really art" argument then just bring out Leonardo's notebooks and drawings and you'll have a much easier time convincing someone of the opposite.
From the website (interesting for ITP students):
Leonardo developed a unique new attitude about machines. He reasoned that by understanding how each separate machine part worked, he could modify them and combine them in different ways to improve existing machines or create inventions no one had ever seen before.
Serial Communication--I can use director now with the bx-24, lots of possibilities
We did a project where we made a potentiometer control a circle on a screen.
Here is the basic code:
Sub Main()
dim invar as byte
dim outvar as byte
dim variableResistor as integer
'set up a buffer
dim InputBuffer(1 to 10) as byte 'this is really 1 byte, strangely there
is a 9 byte overhead
dim OutputBuffer(1 to 10) as byte 'this is really 1 byte strangely there
is a 9 byte overhead
call openQueue(InputBuffer,10)
call openQueue(OutputBuffer,10)
'set up the port
call defineCom3(11, 12, bx1000_1000) 'defineCom(inputPin, outputPin, settings)
'input pin should have the 22k resistor
call openCom(3,9600,InputBuffer,OutputBuffer) '9600 baud
debug.print "start"
do
variableResistor = getADC(15)
'debug.print cStr(variableResistor) 'determine that I get numbers 490-610
'variableResistor = variableResistor\4
'variableResistor = variableResistor -490
variableResistor = cInt(cSng(variableResistor)/2.0)
if variableResistor < 1 then
variableResistor = 10
end if
if variableResistor > 490 then
variableResistor = 490
end if
outvar = cbyte(variableResistor)
call putQueue(OutputBuffer,outvar,1)
'debug.print "outvar "; cstr(outvar);
variableResistor = getADC(13)
'debug.print cStr(variableResistor) 'determine that I get numbers 180
-580
'variableResistor = variableResistor \4
'variableResistor = variableResistor -180
variableResistor = cInt(cSng(variableResistor)/3.0)
if variableResistor < 1 then
variableResistor = 1
end if
if variableResistor > 320 then
variableResistor = 320
end if outvar = cbyte(variableResistor)
call putQueue(OutputBuffer,outvar,1)
'debug.print "outvar "; cstr(outvar);
'outvar = 65
'call putQueue(OutputBuffer,outvar,1)
call getQueue(InputBuffer,invar,1) 'program stops until it hears something
debug.print cStr(inVar) call delay(0.02)
loop
End Sub
Here is a link to the .dir file
Nothing this week. Very Very tired