10/18/2019 “Decisions, Decisions"

After much ideation, we have decided on our idea. We wanted to do some project relating human motion to music, but now we have a more specific project. We are going to make a glove that uses force and motion sensors to play digital noises based on user input.

10/20/2019 “0th Prototype"

After our first meeting of real work, we now have a “zeroth" prototype. It is a finger covering made of sticky notes and tape that has a button attached to it. When pressed, the Arduino displays that the button has been pressed. It is not much yet, but it is our first real physical prototype. Next we need to make it so a noise is played when the button is pressed. We have been looking at getting speakers to play around with that will suit our purposes. We have also been looking at getting some sensors that respond to fingertip pressure, not just on/off like this button. But overall this was a productive meeting and a good first step in our project.

finger cap with button

10/28/2019 “Shopping Adventure"

electronics center logo

Now that we had a basic prototype, we determined it was time to start experimenting with the sensors we wanted to use in our final product. Unfortunately, the sensors we wanted weren’t available from the online ordering spreadsheet, and it would take too long to arrive. Thus, we turned our misfortune into an adventure and two team members - Katie and Shirin - decided to take a trip to a local electronics store followed by a bonding dinner at Panera. We were able to get 2 flex sensors, a force sensitive resistor, and 2 accelerometers. We then got distracted as any engineering student would and spent some time playing around with LEDs, followed up by a tasty dinner at Panera!

11/6/2019 “TPU Blues"

We started the fabrication process for our glove, deciding that instead of opting for a full-hand coverage, the best option would be a flexible handshape that we could attach sensors to and then velcro to a user’s hand. However, 3D printing with flexible filament proved harder than we were expecting. After three attempts, we finally got a prototype that would do what we wanted it to. There are still some changes that need to be made, such as lowering the thickness of the hand in order to allow the user to have more ease of movement. This step in prototyping taught us a lot about the steps we need to make in the future, and the problems that 3D printing can cause. We used the final outline to attach life-sized silhouettes of our sensors, so we can more easily figure out their placements. Thanks to this, we are now armed with our next redesign of the glove and hope to get this fabricated soon.

failed 3d print
non-failed 3d print

11/6/2019 “Noisy Sadness"

To avoid making your ears hear what we have heard over the past week, we are sparing you the burden of seeing our plentiful videos. After trying various algorithms and making a plethora of slightly less bad noises, we decided to take a break. We had been using Arduino’s tone function to try to generate different tones based on the sensor readings from our glove. Unfortunately, the tone function is limited in its abilities to manipulate sound, and we didn’t really understand how our algorithms were working in detail. We reached a point where we were just manipulating numbers hoping it would sound slightly better and spare us from being named the most annoying PoE group. As a result, we decided to pivot to Max, a visual programming tool that allows creation of sound based on inputs from the Arduino using firmata. This was a new field that we had little experience with as a team, and this would also require us to start exploring bluetooth communication - a hefty feat for the last sprint during which 3 out of 5 members also had tech week for the musical. This seemed to be the point at which our team was starting to encounter challenges and feeling stumped after our successes over the past sprints.

11/18/2019 “Bonding Time!"

Third time's a charm! We rescheduled team bonding twice already and were getting worried that we’d never get to it. Luckily, we were finally able to find a time that matched all of our schedules. It seemed that it was perfect timing as we were all tired and stressed about our project, so this was a good refresher to build team health and have a fun break after a busy tech week for FWOP! We met up Monday evening and decided the perfect bonding was a cooking adventure that fulfilled our joint interest in food. We made vegan orange pancakes and vegan gingersnap cookies to satisfy all our dietary needs. We had a yummy adventure and ended our bonding with a quick discussion of what our sprint review goals are. We feel rejuvenated and ready to work once again!

cookies

12/8/2019 “You Get What You Need"

As we come closer and closer to our final demo day, we find ourselves with a “final product". Instead of the three, four, five iterations prior, all we physically have to show is this ultimate piece. For a lot of us on the team, this is bittersweet! We have a real working final product, but a lot of the work that we put in along the way isn’t visible or used anymore. This blog post serves as a reflection on that emotion, but also as a way for us to make sure the work we did doesn’t go forgotten.

Reid

For me, I did a lot of mechanical design that was ultimately scrapped before our last iteration. Though it was a challenge, I loved problem-solving in the space of user comfort. We needed something to hold our sensors, but it had to fit on our glove and be flexible enough to move with the user’s hand. Originally, before even the choice to use a fabric glove, I was even designing a glove that was closer to a medieval armor gauntlet than it was to a comfortable winter glove.

It’s frustrating to put so much time, energy, passion, thought and excitement into a project, or projects, and then not see them used in the final iteration. Initially, it feels like all your work was for nothing, like it had no use at all and you wasted your time. It’s super discouraging! But looking back on it, we wouldn’t have gotten to where we are now without the “wasted work" that I did. If I hadn’t tried to design a gauntlet, we wouldn’t have realized how difficult it is to move in one. If I hadn’t made my first passes at a full-glove cover to hold sensors, the team would never have known how hard it is to keep things aligned on a soft texture. All of our previous iterations wouldn’t have existed without this rough way to hold sensors to the fabric glove.

So while it’s discouraging to not have something to point at on a final presentation, I’ve been able to understand that I still played an important part in the development of this project. While it’s hard to ignore gut reaction feelings about something, sometimes it’s important to work through them and find a more significant, constructive emotion behind why you felt that way.

Shirin

I did a lot of iteration with sound generation using the arduino and some coding on how to detect the movement of the sensors. Ultimately, we pivoted to Max, and most of this code was not used. Instead of coding, I ended up doing more electrical fabrication and documentation. Although different from my initial interests, it was a good challenge to do something out of my comfort zone and find ways to contribute to the team without a set direction to focus on.

Katie

When we decided on a mostly electrical project, I felt okay with doing some electrical stuff, as long as I got to write code for sound generation. I was really looking forward to practicing the programming language C, since this class has been my first real exposure to C. Unfortunately for me, we ended up using a visual programming language called Max, which I did not have much interest in learning. And even if I wanted to learn, I would not have had time with designing circuits and getting the sensors and bluetooth module to work together. Although I did not end up learning much that will be useful to me for what I want to do as a career, electrical stuff now seems more accessible to me, and I used my new skills to repair an led glow poi that was broken. I could see myself applying my new electrical knowledge to personal projects in the future.

Becca

As a mechanical engineer working on a more software/electrical focused project, I was really excited to get a chance to learn more in those areas. Our original plan for the glove included a speaker mounted on the hand so the sound could play from the device rather than an external speaker. I dove into figuring out how to accomplish this task, especially the more challenging problem of figuring out how to amplify the sound coming out of the speaker. (As a Fender enthusiast, I definitely geeked out about amplifiers a whole lot…) I figured out how to build amplification circuits, as well as researching and buying the perfect amplifier chips and speakers. However, by the end of Sprint 3, we found out that sending data BACK to the Arduino from Max was a much more challenging task than we had anticipated. Additionally, all of our work with Max generating awesome sounds would have been lost due to the limited audio processing power of the Arduino. We ultimately had to pivot to having the sounds of the glove come from the computer, rather than a tiny speaker mounted on the glove. While it is disappointing to discard some the work we had done, I honestly learned so much throughout this process and am incredibly proud of the work of our entire team. What made our final product so successful was all of the mistakes we made along the way, and the growth and life lessons we all experienced.