For my fourth project in this class, we were given a more open ended task that was basically making a smart surface that was also heliotropic (I honestly don't remember the exact parameters! Oops!)... however, this was easier said than done. To begin with, I was switched out of my group to a group with all boys! It was to make the group more diverse and I was all for it. And they had a lot of great ideas... the one idea we ran with was making a solar paneled building (or siding for a building) that during the day would collect solar energy and at night it would interact with people walking by. To make a LONG story short, when presenting our idea to the class, it was demolished! We were definitely not cut any slack as everyone ripped into the idea with no mercy! True, I am over exaggerating just a tad.. but that's what it felt like. I mean, I kind of new the idea was a tad crazy, even on a scaled down version we wanted to built, but I figured why not try it. Well, we were sent back to the drawing board, where I became stubborn and kind of mean in all honesty. This had nothing to do with my group members, I just felt like every idea that was thrown out was a art project, and I wanted to do something with a purpose. Plus, I was just having a bad week! Well after debating on ideas, our group finally agreed on a field of cubes that, when people walked by, would interact with them using LEDs. Now, we were just building one cube, but using digital project, we were going to demonstrate a field of cubes of a variety of sizes that would be placed on the Central Campus Diag so that it would force people to interact in a different way. During the day, the cubes would be more of an installation and would be great to look at and the sun would charge the batteries used to power the aurdinos inside the cube. At night, lights would go off as people walked by them. Below our some pictures (sorry about the quality, they were taken on my phone) of our original boards/idea.
Well, once we had our final idea, we decided the interaction with people walking through the cube would be to have the cube light up then fade away as the people walked on through the field, creating a trail of light behind them as they went. We decided to do this using infrared sensors that work using a yes or no response. However, this yes or no response that sensor receives only allowed an LED to turn on if a person was in front of the sensor and of if there wasn't movement after a certain amount of time (I found the code online in order to make that work). My group, however, really wanted the lights to fade, not all at once either, but across the side of the cube! This issue with that was that 1.) I was in a really bad mood that week and was being extra hard to work with and 2.) I was the one person suck with the coding and system work for these lights, which I stink at! So, after hours of working on this code and fighting with one of my team members specifically, I asked a friend in my MSE class for help (he is taking programing classes). And, sure enough, we got a working code! I had the base of the code right and he help me workout the details.. The video below shows the first time we got the sensorand lights to work!
So after that, I had to build four (well three if you don't count the one above) different circuits to put in our cube so that each side of the cube would like up with the infrared sensors. So, I spend HOURS finding the best resistors to use for the circuits (the ones that would allow the LEDs to be the brightest) and finding enough LEDs to use for each of the same color (we used six LEDs for each side for three of the sides and 12 smaller LEDs in parallel for one side). Once all that was done it was time to put the whole thing together as a group! The frame of the cube was cut and painted wood, and the sides of our cube were made out of acrylic that had different laser cut designs on each side that would pick up the light from the LEDs. Also, one side of our cube (the green side) was actullay powered using solar cells that charged the battery!! The other three sides we had to use normal batteries due to lack of solar panels. We spent hours the night before assembling everything, but all and all our project turned out great! And we had excellent digital project work to back up our prototype design. Below is a video of our final working cube, sorry the camera was so shaky!
Our group honestly click together the best during the final stage of putting the cube together! We had a lot of fun doing it and we all got along really well and it seemed like any tension in the group that had existed disappeared! I apologized for my grumpy and catty demeanor and two of the group member whole sent out an email to the group complaining how no one else was working on the project (which was not true!) definitely realized their mistake! So in the end I learned two things, first try not to let the stress and pressure of developing a more open ended project cause to much turbulence in the team. Productive disagreements are good, but try not to argue and let emotions get in the way, it only harms the team. Secondly, I learned that I cannot let me mood or personal life effect my behavior towards my teammates or the project. If I am in a bad mood before a meeting, that is no reason to argue about pointless facts, be short with teammates, or give up on something that seams hard before you have really even tried.
