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This is the final Project.

The google drive with the code can be found here - https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gFkXk-J8Fhny9vSaYoef7rQT22ePv3YU

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Evaluation

Now that this module has finished i am glad to look back and see all the different forms of physical computing i was able to experiment with. It was interesting to see and learn all about the different components that can go into an arduino circuit, and all the things that can be possible to do with them. I am happy that i was able to use some of the things we learned about�� in my own personal project, i am, however, disappointed that i didn't get to use all that i wanted to.

I feel that being able to work with a partner during the personal project was very beneficial because it allowed me to be able to talk to someone who knew our project well, to be able to get a second opinion when i was experiencing difficulties. We were able to play to our strengths, and where one person was not so confident, the other would be able to step in and take on the task.

I am disappointed that we didn't get to add much more to our artifact due to the time spent trying to figure out the delays for each drum beat. I would have liked to experiment more with the different things we learned about in the lessons, however we did still manage to add a button and a buzzer which allowed us to make the project slightly more interesting.

Overall i think that our project turned out well and if we had more time we definitely would have liked to add more. I am still happy with what i have learned and would definitely like to keep experimenting with different aspects of physical computing as it is something that i am interested in.

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Week 11 - 16/05/19

This week  we began to finalise the artefact by adding a buzzer to make the tune of the trumpets to go along with the drum, this was fairly simple, but quite time consuming, as i had to make sure the buzzer was playing in time with the drum beats.

The buzzer is used to create different sounds, you can only change the pitch however. If you wanted to produce different sounds, you would need a speaker to do that.

Here is the datasheet for the buzzer: 

http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/2171929.pdf

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Week 10 - 09/05/19

With the tune sorted out, we decided to add a button to make the code start, this way it would not just start playing automatically once plugged in. 

This proved to be fairly simple to do and made testing the project a lot easier. The button, however only turns the drum on, and does not turn it off again. The drum will stop when it reaches the end of the tune and will wait for you to press the button again to play the tune again, but it will not stop half way through if you press the button while it is playing.

Below is a picture of the circuit

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Week 9 - 18/04/19

To help us to figure out the timings for the drum, we decided to listen to the tune on YouTube and press a lap on a stopwatch every time a drum beat would hit. this way we would be able to tell when the drums were hitting without having to guess.

This didn't exactly work out because both Hannah and i got different results when we tried this technique, probably due to our different reaction times. 

We tried making the whole tune slower to see if we could better match it that way, but thought that slowing the tune down would make it unrecognisable if the tune was played using the arduino that way.

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Week 6 - 28/03/19

This week we started working on our project ideas. Myself and a classmate Hannah decided to work as a pair. We looked up similar experiments online and found something similar to what we wanted to create.

We wanted to create a drum using servos, that would work by hitting chopsticks against a surface such as a box or a can.

After looking online for different ideas we found a video of someone who had made something similar to what we wanted to create. this was a good starting point because it allowed us to see that this sort of thing was fairly simple to do.

Below is a screenshot and a link to the video by Jaidyn Edwards called Arduino - Drum playing robot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIKYsOaX7xQ&fbclid=IwAR0h72feTfSWd-dzNasdaUXxwEL_jiWOOWAuPvZSNrL8DNZwEDiEa1TdjxY

We started to make the arduino drum by using two servos with pencils attached, and a breadboard connected with wires to the arduino. 

The items that we needed were:

Computer - To run the arduino program and to write the code on,

Arduino Leonardo board - We used this to power the project,

Micro USB cable - To attach the arduino to the computer,

Breadboard - This is where we will connect all the components to the arduino,

Wires - To connect the components to the breadboard and the arduino,

2x Servos - To act as the arms for the drum

Pringles can - To attach the servos to, to make the base of the drum,

2x Chopsticks - To act as the drumsticks for the drum.

We didn’t have access to some of these items today, but we plan on getting them for next week to start implementing them into the project.

Below is an image of the rough idea for our project.

We set this up by attaching the servos and getting the Servo sweep code from the Arduino IDE. 

At first i had both Servos running from the same servo object, this was causing both servos to do the same action. After adding a new servo object, i was able to make the two servos run separately.

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This is a video of the basic drum working

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Thematic Infographic

For this module we had to make a thematic infographic about a related topic. I decided to make my thematic infographic about the top ten most automated countries in the world. By most automated, I mean the countries with the highest robot density per 10,000 workers in the manufacturing industry. I decided to make an infographic on this topic because automation is something that can change through the years, and the robot density in different countries will become greater, or smaller, as the technological world advances, and automation becomes more common in manufacturing industries.

Below is a list of references:

Brei, T. (2013). What is Industrial Automation?. [online] Sure Controls. Available at: https://www.surecontrols.com/what-is-industrial-automation/ [Accessed 14 Mar. 2019].

Crowe, S. (2018). 10 Most Automated Countries in the World. [online] The Robot Report. Available at: https://www.therobotreport.com/10-automated-countries-in-the-world/ [Accessed 14 Mar. 2019].

IFR International Federation of Robotics. (n.d.). Robot density rises globally. [online] Available at: https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/robot-density-rises-globally [Accessed 14 Mar. 2019].

Indramat Products. (n.d.). 5 Key Benefits of Industrial Automation - Indramat Products. [online] Available at: http://www.indramat-us.com/5-key-benefits-of-industrial-automation/ [Accessed 14 Mar. 2019].

Nichols, G. (2018). Robot density: A strange metric elegantly illustrates the revolution underway | ZDNet. [online] ZDNet. Available at: https://www.zdnet.com/article/robot-density-a-strange-metric-elegantly-illustrates-the-revolution-underway/ [Accessed 14 Mar. 2019].

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Week 5 - 7/3/19

This week we looked more into infographics and talked more about which topics we could pick, and what makes a good infographic.

I have decided to do my infographic about the top 10 Automated countries in the world. I will be looking at industrial automation and the amount of robots per worker in the industries in each country.

We also talked about the second project, where we have to make some sort of robot project. This project can be useful, or purely artistic.

I have decided to work in a group with another member of my class and create a robot that will play a tune on a drum.

We also looked at different projects that out lecturer had done in the past, he showed us the different things we could possibly do for our own projects.

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Here we are showing how the Unipolar Stepper motor runs faster by turning a dial

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Week 4 - 28/2/19

This week we started off by looking at The art of Motion control which can be described in better detail from the taomc website: http://www.taomc.com/

Motion control, or computer-controlled movement in robotics has advanced production and design. We looked at work by Bruce Shapiro, who has dedicated over 25 years to exploring motion control as a medium for artistic impression.

We looked at The Ribbon dancer, whos inspiration came from watching dancers on stage.

For the practical part of this lesson we looked at Unipolar stepper motors.

One of the differences between unipolar stepper motors and a bipolar stepper motors is that Bipolar stepper motors have four lead wires, whereas unipolar stepper motors have six lead wires.

We experimented with these and added a function that, if you turned a dial, the stepper motor would run faster or slower. this was a very simple project because the majority of the lesson was spent learning about motion control.

Below is the setup we had to make the stepper motor turn faster or slower depending on the position of the dial.

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Here is the Sensor scanning the area, then focussing on the closest object

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Week 3 - 21/2/19

To start this weeks lesson we looked at different robots.

The first Robot we looked at was the Heart Robot created by David McGoran, Roseanne Wakely and Paul O’Dowd of Rusty Squid in 2008.

This puppet-robot hybrid aims to show us how robots could show emotion in the future, and how we could react with them through different experiences.

The second robot we looked at was the Eyes Robot, also created by Rusty Squid, but in collaboration with the Bristol Robotics Lab.

This robot aims to show and add new understanding to how human eyes show emotion.

Rusty squid website - http://rustysquid.org.uk/

This week we also talked about the Thematic infographic assignment, we looked at an example of one titled - How green is the ipad?

Some potential ideas were: Warehouses, Home automation, How servos work, Comparing arduinos with previous technology, Microcontrollers over time, Space debris, Physical computing timeline, Industrial automation, Agriculture, and many more.

For the practical part of the lesson we looked at sensors and actuators. Sensors measure the environment and Actuators act on the environment.

We had the task to create a robot that would scan an area, then turn to the object that was closest to it. 

We needed many new parts to be able to complete this task. We needed a Servo, and an Ultrasonic sensor.

Servos are small devices that have a shaft that can be rotated depending on the signal they recieve. They have three wires that stick out; one for power, one for ground, and the final one is a control input line. 

Here is the datasheet for the servo i will be using: 

 http://www.ee.ic.ac.uk/pcheung/teaching/DE1_EE/stores/sg90_datasheet.pdf

An ultrasonic sensor measures distances using ultrasonic waves. It works by sending out an ultrasonic wave and measures the time it takes for the wave to get to the target place and back again.

Here is the datasheet for the Ultrasonic sensor: 

https://cdn.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Sensors/Proximity/HCSR04.pdf

We used the Ultrasonic sensor and attached it to a servo, that span around while the sensor was scanning. this recorded all the distances from the surrounding area. The code then told the sensor to go back to the closest object, by spinning back around on the servo.

Above is an image of the setup. I used my thermos mug as the ‘closest object’ that the sensor had to detect and in the end we got it to work. 

Below is the code i used to make it work.

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Week 8 - 11/04/19

This week we started experimenting with different concepts and trying to look for different aspects we could add to our project.

Below is a screenshot and the link to a video called Coke Piano and Launchpad made with Arduino by Lucas Zanella

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttm62RBdOuo&fbclid=IwAR15Zd_TQtTCZSEST695aO3yd7F3_hrh_tuDqIr_y-kZge6w486zt3lAO78

This video gave us inspiration to try something similar with the drum, but after further experimentation, it seemed to complicated to try and implement into our project.

Another video that inspired us was a video of another arduino drum that lit up once hit, this seems like a simple addition to an arduino drum

Robotic drums: Motors and Sticks by Liat Segal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOi2FUBZz5A&fbclid=IwAR1AB7fpIjAMk0QamQpHm0oFjmqfnqTm8xHvlOaTvc38kjbbp8Eo2t-FUs0

This week was mostly spent working on the timings of the drum beats and trying to figure out any other aspects that we would like to add to the project.

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Here i have made a circuit that, when the LDR is covered, the light turns on. This would be useful for an automatic light that turns on when the room it is in is dark.

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Here is a video of us measuring the resistance of the LDR with and without light using the multimeter. this works by testing the current running through the circuit. Depending how much light the LDR is receiving will effect how strong the current is.

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Week 2 - 14/2/19

This week we started looking at light dependant resistors. Here is the datasheet for them: https://www.sunrom.com/get/443700

In class we were measuring the resistance of the LDR with and without light using a multimeter. To do this, we measured the resistance while the LDR was covered, and again when was exposed to the light. This shows the difference in current between the two, and how this would affect a circuit.

Below is an example of the circuit i created to test how much light the LDR was receiving. I had the amount print to the console in the code so i could see how it was being affected.

We then had the task of using the LDR to make a light turn on and off depending how much light it is receiving. This would be useful for automatic lights that turn on when the room is dark enough.