Janis

During Sprint III we added sensor input to the system to make our art installation interactive. We started with infrared distance sensor to measure the presence/ distance of a person. Whenever a sensor detects an object in its range, the corresponding paddles behind it will rotate to a different position. A small-scale model was made to demonstrate the interaction process.

A big decision we made during this sprint is to shift the object rotating in the middle from ribbons to paddles. The main reason is the difficulty involved in controlling the spinning of ribbons for desired patterns. As ribbons are not consistently providing the same pattern during each rotation and we couldn’t find a desirable ribbon material for the project. Since we all want to focus on the design of interaction instead of the system complexity, we changed from twisting ribbons to twisting paddles.

On Wednesday we started to assemble the third Prototype with 12 paddles on. In this iteration of the project we increased it to full scale with most parts we are going to use in the final iteration. The Arduino Mega 2560 replaced the Uno to provide control channels for more servos. A wall plug-in power was added to replace the old bulky lab DC power source, six ultrasonic range detectors were connected to get sensor input and a LED strip was installed to provide background lightening. Below is a picture for our prototype.

We are soooooo excited that the prototype is working, but we also realized improvements can be made in the next sprint

• Make the product aesthetically pleasing
• More interaction modes
• Clean up the wires (imagine 64 wires tangling together…)
• Paint the box
• Move the circuits onto proto-board
• Find a place to put up our project (library, hallway and etc?)

It’s so surprising that there’s going to be only two weeks and a half left for this project and we’d love to finish it strong and, of course, enjoy ourselves along the way. Go team!