Week 13
Kate's Physical Computing Journal
Some Thoughts on the 13th week of Physical Computing....
This class was great. I thought that everyones project ideas were really interesting. I can't wait to see them all when they are done. Yulia, Idit and I came up with an idea for our final project but apparently it is too difficult to finish in time for finals so we varied the idea and made it a little more simple. This is one lesson I am definately learning. For prototypes you don't have to make everything complex, sometimes simple works better.
http://affect.media.mit.edu/AC_research/applications.html
I researched affective technology for this week. I was most interested in what sorts of applications are being developed in this area. Here are a few that were intriguing.
These glasses allow people to see the confusion as well as interest levels of the person wearing them. I found these interesting because they could be used for a social cause. They could be used in therapy to see the effectiveness of the therapy. They could be used in education especially long distance learning to bring attention to weakness in courses or classes.
The possibilities for jewelry that could give feedback on emotional states is very large. It could form a new way of communication.
We started working on our final project. We wanted to make something that would make people living in cities like New York feel like they were either out in nature or transport them to another place. Why do this? In New York, apartments are small, there isn't a lot of nature, life is fast paced, and there are not many place you can be alone. We decided that for this type of situation it had to be something that could fit in an apartment and would already be used, since there is usually not a lot of space in NYC apartments. We decided on a bed. We want to make a canopy. When the user lays down on the bed the current weather outside causes a series of images to be projected onto the canopy directly over the user. As the weather changes the images change.
 |
 |
 |
|
Here is our code so far. We are having so much trouble with qprox though so we are thinking of switching over to something more stable.
dim qprox as bytedim inputBuffer(1
To 13) As Byte '4-byte output buffer.
dim outputBuffer(1 To 10) As Byte '1-byte output buffer.
dim inByte as byte
dim gotaByte as boolean
dim invar as byte
sub main ()
call delay(0.5) ' start program with a half-second delay
' define which pins COM3 will be:
call defineCom3(11,12,bx1000_1000)
' set aside memory for input and output:
call openQueue(inputBuffer, 13)
call openQueue(outputBuffer, 10)
' open COM3:
call openCom(3, 9600, inputBuffer, outputBuffer)
'read in data from qprox sensor
qprox = getpin(15)
debug.print ; cstr(qprox)
' send it out the serial port:
call putQueue(OutputBuffer, qprox, 1)do
call putpin(8,0)
if statusQueue(inputBuffer) = true then
call getQueue(inputBuffer, inByte, 1)
' if you got the message from director, send out data:
if inByte = 65 then
call putpin(8,1)
' read the switch, convert it to a readable ASCII value:
qprox = getpin(15)
debug.print ; cstr(qprox)
' send it out the serial port:
call putQueue(OutputBuffer, qprox, 1)
else
call putpin(8,0)
end if
end if
loop
end sub