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Final Project Documentation

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hliS8BqzCDNUL2EwG-I8Znw6SW_PO4z0SaplVlnxZ1U/edit?usp=sharing

*** THE REST OF THE DOCUMENTATION IS ON AIDANS BLOG

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The Future of Physical Computing

Something I have been thinking about is how physical computing has not changed that much over the past couple of decades - the fact that we still use projects from the early 2000s as reference for our own projects is telling of the level of utility of the tools themselves. Platforms like MAX8 and Arduino have been around a long time and have almost a cult-like following, so it is interesting to think about how and if this following will phase out as we enter a more digital-oriented world. 

In the age of NFTs and digital assets that people will utilize for status in the “metaverse,” part of me wonders if physical computers and creative technologists will become the vigilantes and rebels of the coming years - a grasping onto history of sorts. The integration of the digital/electronic and physical/analog are inherently incorporated into the future, so I can also envision a world where the metaverse and the physical world can coexist because they augment one another. 

I am not sure if new tools are in progress or if we will stick to the tools we still use - I hope it becomes more accessible and sustainable as time goes on. Other than that, I have no idea where it will go from here and how long it will take (if it can happen) for people to exhaust the possibilities of applying these tools.

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Paper Prototype Feedback

Just some notes - don’t mind me! 

People thought our paper balls were 

-  Rice cakes 

-  Popcorn 

-  Muffins 

-  “Food”

Suggestions on how we can send/deliver output 

-  Emails 

- The day after 

- Placed around the space to make it more subconscious

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Final Project Planning Document

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Hwemew83HTloDBTIH9Lz9iELGrVOa8wItmIzbNX9IJE/edit?usp=sharing

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Paper Prototype & Early Ideation

Here is our early ideation document

And here is our paper prototype - we’re thinking about using the arduino capacitative touch library to make an interactive art piece about algorithms and data... we will explain tomorrow lol 

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Sustainable Material Research

For this assignment, I wanted to research sustainable alternatives for acrylic. I am a huge fan of laser cutting and think that in my time in the shop, I have noticed how difficult it is to actually maximize the material scraps. It is hard to be accurate, or if you need bigger pieces, scrap is difficult to work with. I started my research here - https://ecosystemsdisplays.com/green-guide. This site gave a pretty baseline list of alternatives for non-recycled or “pure” materials. The alternative for acrylic listed on this site is called ECO-glass. Though this material is listed as if it is easy to acquire, I actually could not find any site that distributed sheets of it outside of bulk orders. 

As I looked it up, the first result led me to a company in Italy that makes custom colors of recycled acrylic sheets (i.e. made of plastic…) so they’re not even the ECO-glass material. It also implies that the shipping to the states probably would’t be sustainable or net-zero. I kept going down the rabbit hole, and started researching recycled acrylic material. The first site that I was recommended was an Etsy store! In my head, I was under the impression that the seller was taking scraps and melting them together to make these really cool patters, but I was mistaken! They are actually just patterned acrylic, not recycled in any fashion. This is very misleading because if I were in a rush, I probably would have just ordered these because they look recycled due to the interesting patterns - https://www.etsy.com/listing/660190297/full-sets-of-acrylic-pmma-two-sided?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_ps-a-craft_supplies_and_tools-raw_materials-plastic&utm_custom1=_k_EAIaIQobChMI86XdlLGg9AIVCXeGCh2m2Q3LEAQYASABEgKk3_D_BwE_k_&utm_content=go_12565278184_123210930927_507237315592_pla-322726484098_c__660190297_129026349&utm_custom2=12565278184&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI86XdlLGg9AIVCXeGCh2m2Q3LEAQYASABEgKk3_D_BwE . 

Anyway, I scrolled further down and found a site for a company that sells clear recycled acrylic sheets. They’re fairly affordable, but they are not readily advertised as the plethora of their other product. You need to actively seek out recycled materials in order to be offered them. They claim “TAP Plastics is excited to offer this green alternative to standard acrylic and plexiglass, Chemcast® EcoGreen Recycled Acrylic (plexiglass), the new environmentally friendly cell cast acrylic sheet produced with 100% recycled materials. This product eliminates tons of waste per year by using both pre and post consumer waste, repurposing the scraps that are available and creating sheets made from recycled plastic.” They have the same quality and strength as non-recycled materials, so I am not sure why a company that is so proud of having a recycled material wouldn’t put more effort into promoting it. Through this site, it is possible to get a sample though they are located on the west coast. 

I found an artist who has done some beautiful architectural models with recycled acrylic and glass - https://www.alyssadennis.com/sculpture. A lot of her work surrounds natural materials and they have a very delicate, yet rustic quality to them. 

All of the things you can make with acrylic can be made with recycled acrylic. With all of the leftovers in the shop, I’d be interested in finding out how we could recycle acrylic ourselves as to maximize the amount of use we can get out of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwFaiSAS8k4

Though I don’t know what we are making for Aidan and my final project, I would definitely be interested in using recycled materials. I hate waste!!!

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DC Motor Labs

This lab went well! My lab looked a little different in terms of materials because my arduino kit came with different tools - it looked like this 

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/arduino/arduino_dc_motor.htm

Unfortunately (as Yeseul has seen), my phone basically exploded - I lost my documentation for this lab but I did get the motor rotating with these instructions as opposed to the ones provided on the syllabus. I did not do the stepper motor lab, but I am interested in seeing if anyone implemented it in an interesting way. Sorry about the lack of documentation - I will hopefully have a phone by Wednesday :( 

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Project #2 Documentation: Augmented Recycling Bin

For this project, Jeanne and I decided to work on an extension of her last project, which was the light-up recycling bin. We decided to utilize serial communication through a p5 sketch that included audio and visual elements.

We definitely shifted our idea from the temperature sensor idea - but not before some suffering first! 

Our first issue began when bringing the temperature sensor and serial communication together - we kept getting an error regarding the fact that Serial.write(_) could not take a double value, and so we messed around a lot with the code...

And once we got it working by just using Serial.print() because it can take multiple different data types, we started to get readings of 0 on our sensor 

Needless to say, we were angry! After a bit of re-uploading and messing around with the code, we were able to manipulate the circle drawing from the class lab... kind of? It was super jumpy *added above* 

We decided our best bet to actually get something done would be to change sensors - though Jeanne had used the break beam sensor for her last project, I was excited to try it out for the first time. 

What we have so far is that we manipulated the circle/potentiometer code so that when something passes through the sensor, it the circle appears and a ding sound occurs. Now that we have this base, we will spend the next couple of days playing around with the kinds of things we can generate through this interaction to make it even more engaging! 

Pretend these are break-beam sensors, please :)

**Videos posted below!

Phase 2:

After making sure we had the serial communication kind of working for the break-beam sensors, I got down to business with the p5 code. We decided it would be the best move to show facts about recycling when the sensor goes off and the sound is triggered. These are what the messages looked like: 

The code can be found here: 

https://editor.p5js.org/sferrera89/sketches/EbroC03Db

What this code is doing is going into a text file, parsing out the lines, and returning a random line with a random background. Pretty basic, but this took so freaking long it had me like this 

And the Arduino code looked as follows: 

And you’re probably like “whaaat” and you’re right... there’s some funky stuff happening here! So basically, if you can tell in the videos below, the green circle was looking JUMPY. It was identifying that there was something in the middle, but it was acting crazy. So, I sought the assistance of GA Jason Gao, my night in shining armor. He smoothed out our input with the code above and explained it to me very thoroughly, which I will now butcher: his aim was to have the code   detect when there’s 4 zeros in a row because the serial monitor was giving 2-3 zeros and ones when something was in the middle - something we didn’t notice when beginning to work with it because we assumed it would be sensing normally.  The first part of the code was storing the last 8 digits, but we only need the last 4 for a bit. So, Jason did a funky thing with byte and storing the numbers in the loop in an array and then the code started working! 

In terms of the p5 code, the issue was coming from the fact that we put everything in the draw() loop instead of the serialEvent() function! DUH! I felt like an idiot but then remembered that Jason rocks so then I felt amazing again. The final version is above! You cannot see the text at all but it is there. #Recycle!! 

We faced challenges basically every step of the way for this - the finicky nature of the serialcontrol platform, getting caught in draw loops and having the p5 web editor crash, and the seemingly endless struggle of not knowing which part of the project was causing problems. In terms of happy moments, getting to different milestones definitely made it worth it. Getting that first interaction successful was a great feeling, as well as getting some help from Jason and knowing that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. 

If we had more time or if we were to work on an extension of this project, I think it would be worth figuring out how to implement this as a product and what the extra machinations would look like. Someone mentioned in class what it would be like if a janitor had to empty the can or what would happen when the bin got full - thinking about these cases makes me wonder if there are certain elements we can add to the code if the sensor detects a break for more than 5 seconds it will stop making the noise. Other than that, I think we would mostly refine the code, refine the way in which the sensors attach to the bin, and the facts about recycling themselves. This was an overall fun project to work on and I’m feeling alright about the way it turned out. 

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Project #2 Progress

I needed to test if my temperature sensor worked before Jeanne and I moved forward with this idea, and it actually worked way better and more accurately than people said it would online. I used this tutorial to test the sensor: https://www.bc-robotics.com/tutorials/using-a-tmp36-temperature-sensor-with-arduino/ 

The readings were ranging from 22-30 - it actually worked best when I blew on it instead of touching it with my hands. I wonder how COVID safe it would be if we followed through with some kind of breath temperature project - it seems like it could be fun, at least. 

I also revisited my old p5 code for my poem project and made sure it ran correctly in the p5 editor - it worked great! 

We might pivot from here after chatting tomorrow, but at least we have a working sensor and a good idea of how accurately we can sense atmospheric temperature! 

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Project #2 Idea Sketch

I’m interested in revisiting a similar idea to one I had for project #1 (the mood mirror) - I think it would be cool to have a temperature sensor be in control of some kind of fortune in a p5 sketch. I was inspired by a project I did freshman year in creative coding where I parsed out lines of a book and turned them into generated poems. I think it could be interesting to do something like this and depending on your body temperature, you would get a different kind of poem or message. I like the concept of utilizing arbitrary information as a spiritual or ritualistic guide to living and how obsessed we are with finding reasons for everything.

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Keyboard Control Lab

I had some issues with this lab! My circuit worked great... 

until the last step where we actually make the keyboard communicate with the Arduino. I had to change KEY_LEFT_SHIFT to ‘q’ because it couldn’t recognize the prior. I tried a few different examples of the code, I made sure the keyboard library was downloaded, and I changed the import from brackets, quotes, and these things <>. 

 Curious to know what the issue was! I had high hopes for myself here but I am not quite sure what to do from here.

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Physical-Virtual Project Research

https://itp.nyu.edu/ranch/projects/project.html?#project?projectId=6735

True Love Tinder Robot by Nicole He 

“This project explores the idea that the computer knows us better than we know ourselves, and therefore it has better authority on who we should date than we do. In a direct way, the True Love Tinder Robot makes the user confront what it feels like to let computers make intimate decisions for us.“

I love love love this project (I guess I just have a thing for hands) but since Nicole archived their ITP blog, there is no documentation to be found! All of the information I could find was what was written on the ITP page. I like how this project makes you step back and realize how much power we have ceded to technology and how frequently we give up our autonomy to the algorithm. I am currently working on a senior project about algorithms and their impact on the feminine, so seeing this project and thinking about it through the lens of autonomy is so interesting to me. 

The sheets of metal act as a galvanic skin response sensor, so physiological changes are detected depending on who is being viewed on the screen. I wish I had more access to the documentation because I would love to see this tool in action - it connects the physical world to the digital in a way that creates a third, heterotopic space. It is so strange and I love it!

If I were to make a similar project, I think I would have there be multiple means of sensing physiological changes - surrendering your hands to this feels vulnerable, but I would imagine it would feel much more vulnerable to have to have your feet on a platform, your heart rate set up to a monitor, and potentially and even snarkier text-to-speech module (even though I don’t know what the original one said, I can imagine I’d want to up the snarky-ness). I love projects like this! 

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Serial Labs

These labs were a whole mess for me! I set up the potentiometer on my Uno 

I then was able to read the serial ports 

But THEN, I kept getting an error because there was no printList function. 

So to try and make things work, I commented it out and ran it without printList and it kind of worked? It was jumping between two values but at least it was running, so I moved forward with the rest of the lab

Next, I was able to add the port select menu 

Once I tried this, things went downhill and I’m not sure why. 

The readings began to not work and I got very small, jumpy changes in my graph. I kept going nevertheless and plugged in the code examples to make sure there were no mistakes there. 

Once I did that, it made it worse! I need some help lol. 

The output lab on the other hand went great! I once again had to do some shifting around of comments and things that were undefined or causing errors, but it ended up working for both parts! No questions here. 

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Sensor Research

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L3M7I6ZlOYRl6QeXw7jOii7v6P4pkRWb8WTOnpgBlbE/edit?usp=sharing