Stranger Things
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
I'd rather be in outer space šø

ellievsbear
we're not kids anymore.

#extradirty
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
šŖ¼

ā
will byers stan first human second
One Nice Bug Per Day
Misplaced Lens Cap
Xuebing Du

Andulka
trying on a metaphor
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her

⣠Chile in a Photography ā£
$LAYYYTER
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@creativerobot
Physical computing assignment #ENEL599 :)
Assessment Vlog Blog.
To start off my vlog I brainstormed how I wanted to present it. I went through ideas of stopmotion animation, simple pictures, a voiceover of me doing something or just talking to the camera with pictures popping up. I decided to settle on the last one so I could focus more on what I was writing. Also being new to editing trying to sync up other things would take me a lot of time.
After writing a script and going to record, I remembered I had a software called 'Facerig'.
Facerig is a software developed by a company called Halotech studios. FR tracks your face and allows you to embody different characters and creatures. I decided to use the base character Midori as other characters (like a dragon or a snowman) were a lot less flitting.
Facerig also used my mouth positions and audio coming from my mic to determine how the mouth moved. It wasn't extremely accurate but was still a lot of fun to play around with and use for my vlog.
For writing my script, I decided to split it into 4 sections.
The introduction (a little about me),
Part 1 (Why Uni/Why BCT),
Part 2 (My future/goals),
Conclusion (what is Creative technologies).
I believed this plan worked out pretty well, except for the Part 1 and 2 were a little too long, so I had to cut out the introduction. This was ok though as it wasn't very nessecary.
For editing I decided to use Wondershare Filmora. A friend had suggested it to me as it was very good for beginner editing. I picked it up and instantly it worked perfectly. In the end I made a vlog I'm pretty proud of. Though next time I'll work on my audio leveling as it was pretty quiet when I uploaded it to YouTube.
Mini projects part 3
For this project we were tasked to use audacity and work together to make a musical instrument. By this we can practice editing and recording sounds and working together as a team.
My team instantly had an idea to base our instrument off those "Dj pads"
These boards are used by DJS and music creators to easily add sound effects to a song. So we decided we wanted to have an underlying beat and have the user press the buttons for different sound effects to make their own song.
We decided for sustainability we would reuse the old monopoly board and box so we weren't wasting any new materials.
We used small cardboard "springs" to push the buttons up so they arent connecting the 2 tinfoil pieces together. When the button is pressed down they connect and the makey makey makes a sound.
Under the board the system was a lot of copper wire, and when connected with the crocodile clips we risked she buttons short circuit-ing and being "pressed" when they wernt. Unfortunately we didn't leave enough time to fix this, though it still ended up working fine.
Another issue we had was we overlooked the fact that the makeymakey had 6 main connections, when we made 9 buttons. That means only 2/3rd of the buttons could actually make sound there the others didn't work. We overcame this by taking the button off and putting crosses so people knew not to press them.
This time when everyone demonstrated their work, instead of seeing how people reacted to ours I decided to look around and see other people's projects.
Firstly, I spent a lot of time at one project which had a juggling ball, and whenever you caught the ball it would play a drum sound. This was really appealing to me as a person who loves playing around with things. Throwing the tin ball was a lot of fun, and combining 2 balls to create a beat was a funny challenge. Interacting with others also playing with the balls was also a lot of fun. What I can learn from this project is that it isn't all about visual appeal, but also interactivity. The uniqueness of being able to throw the ball and it make a drum noise was very creative and kept me hooked for quite a while.
The second project I really enjoyed had awesome visuals. It was rainforest themed and it seemed when you pressed the buttons it would make a sound.
Each button was labeled clearly with what sound would play, and it was what I interpreted as rainforest themed with all the leaves. I enjoyed looking at this project and it caught my eye straight away. This project taught me about how simple something can be but still be eye catching. It was super unique and I loved the idea of it.
Overall
I learnt a lot from our project and others. I learnt about looking out for small hidden assumptions, like the assumption we made that the makeymakey could interact with 9 buttons (it can, we just didn't have the wires prepared for it) in the future I will have to be more careful about these assumptions in general and try to avoid these mistakes.
I also learnt about how importaint visual aspects and physical parts of a project are, as if they're done right they can catch people's eye and keep them interested and interacting for a while. The unique throwing of the ball from one project and the forest theming of the other really helped me learn that lesson.
#ctec502
Catching up on blogging part 2
Hacking a board game!
After learning how the Makeymakey works, we were tasked to "hack a board game". We got given a old board game and had to upgrade it in some way using the makeymakey and copper tape (and anything else we wanted to supply).
My group grabbed the game Monopoly for kids. Its a pretty well known game so we had an advantage as people could easily sit down and understand the rules straight away.
We decided to split our team up into groups, as we had different things to work on. Matt and Sebastian both worked on the coding for the makeymakey while Cam and I work on the physical parts. (Matt also painted the board and it looked super cool)
We decided due to timetable conflicts to meet up on the Tuesday before it was due to make sure everything works together and nail out any small mishaps.
Our ideas were to add a virtual dice roller, and sound effects/lights that changed when a character piece was placed on a tigger point (Pass go, go to jail, chance). I decided to use a circuit board called "Circuit playground express" for the LED controls. Overall this didn't turn out the way we wanted as we didn't have enough crocodile clips and we didn't leave enough time to sort out small issues. Luckily the leds weren't the main part of our project, and we still had the music and sound effects from Sebastian and the virtual dice.
We tried to be as sustainable as possible with this game, using the game box painted black as the base to hide all the electronics as well as my spare circuit board and LEDS. This was for small projects and prototypes we aren't wasting lots of valuable resources.
When we let the class play it, I decided to learn from last time and stay around my game to see how others would react and interact with it. This way I could get more feedback on our game and therefore improve our skills and knowledge for our next project.
Feedback:
People (including myself) found the sound effects of the game were quite loud compared to the music. This just comes down to time restraints and more experience needed in audio leveling. Though it is still an important lesson to learn as it may effect user interaction with upcoming projects.
Sometimes the diceroll will skip over someones turn and cause confusion during the game. This is because the connections with copper tape are a bit faulty and if the crocodile clips when pressed together too long it would start scrolling rapidly through rolls thinking the button was bring pressed a lot. To overcome this problem I personally would put a small timer inbetween rolls to help avoid rolls being skipped over.
The 'sexy' twist was quite eye catching and drew people in, especially with the music. The small brand changing and funny additions to the audio helped being people into play our game.
Overall
What I learnt from this project is how valuable working in a team is and how using your groups strengths helps you make something great. Being able to work well together to develop and create ideas is an important part in Creative Technologies and I think my group worked really well together.
But from that I also learnt that sometimes its ok to not be super ambitious with a project and that dialing it back a bit is ok. By working completely on the leds I didnt get a chance to learn about the code or the rest of the creation. For it to not all work. My group has a lot of very strong ideas but sometimes we can bite off a bit more than we can chew. In the future I want to be able to look at the time frame of a project and accurately work on our time management and how ambitious our project is.
Ok so this is a little late but better late than never.
10 March 2021
So this week we got introduced to a makeymakey, which allows us to turn almost anything (that is conductive) into a keyboard. For example play dough can represent and replace the arrow keys on a keyboard.
Using makey makey we were tasked to adapt a simple online game from keyboard to the makemakey, using whatever conductive materials we can as the controllers.
Firstly, our group got the game "Kiba and Kumba jungle run" so we decided to theme off that.
(Link if you ever wanna play its an adventure)
We decided firstly we wanted our controls to be themed. For example we made a crown, a play dough banana, a metal banana which tie into the themes of Kiba.
With this design, we found that despite it fitting the themes of Kiba, our controls were very difficult to use and confusing to figure out. Not many people tried to play our game and despite having instructions it was overall too overwhelming for the user.
We then learnt about simplicity, and how games shouldn't be overcomplicated just so then its themed. Simple designs, colours and symbols that everyone can universally reconise will make interacting with the game easier.
Taking this lesson on board we decided to change everything up a little. I made us origami samurai hats which we pointed in different directions to indicate which arrow key they represented. We made it conductive by putting a strip of copper tape which we would hook up to the makeymakey. We also implemented a wrist band the user could put on, instead of having to hold the crocodile clip or piece of tinfoil for conductivity. We also changed our game to a more reconisable; Snake. By doing this it makes it easier for someone to sit down and play our game, as the only thing they need to learn is the controls because they may already be familiar with the game.
If I was going to adapt this further, I could develop a samurai version of snake, so the controls and the game had a visual link. (As snake and samurai dont really go well together)
I decided to stay around our table during the playing of the game to get some feedback on it. People enjoyed playing, but the controls were difficult as the copper pads were too small to press, so sometimes when you hit a 'button' it dosent connect properly and messes up the game play.
To fix this issue I would have to make the copper pads/ connections / buttons larger, to avoid someone mis-pressing the button.
Overall, what I learnt from this project is that simplicity tends to be more appealing and inclusive. As if a young child got given our first game, it would be extremely difficult for them to understand. Whereas our second game they would (hopefully) have a better understanding. The use of globally reconised symbols, colours and shapes helps a product become more visually appealing and overall better for the user.
What is the event/pattern you have chosen? I've chosen to explore the effects of rain and its impact on Agriculture and Industrial environments.
What are the patterns/habits associated with that event/thing? One pattern I have noticed is how everything is split into their own groups, but all completely relate back to the main town. The rain helps increase the number of crops, which helps the town get more food and therefore helps the town grow. The factories help produce products that canāt be gained from nature alone and helps the town advance technologically. Agriculture also helps the town grow by providing trading and meat. The town positively gives back positively to both Agriculture and Industry by providing a market for them to sell to and workers to help them produce more products to be sold. Despite this the town only negatively gives back to nature via Co2 emissions and working with and in the factories that produce smog and acid rain that can negatively hurt the environment.
Structure; What has influenced the patterns? The town's needs and demands heavily influence most of the patterns in this loopy, as the more the town grows, the more people there will be that demand products. This is a simple version of supply and demand. The more townsfolk there are demanding the need for technology and food, the more the supply will also increase. Because of this nature is slowly decreasing as there is not much being given back to it at all.Ā
What assumptions, values, beliefs underlie the structure? This is firstly assuming the factories are not sustainable in their usage, so they are only giving back to the town and not replanting any trees or helping nature recover. Therefore they are still a major contributor to co2 emissions and cause Smog and acid rain. Another assumption I have made is that CO2 emissions are still an issue, and this environment doesn't have a way (except for trees) of combating it.Ā
First Post!
My name is Paige Harris and this is my Creative technologies blog! Ill probably post as much as I can here but Iām still new to tumblr in general so Iām sure my blogging style is going to change a lot as I get more used to it. A small about me is I'm very passionate about Electronics and robotics but Iām not so confident in programming. I enjoy playing videogames and DnD in my free time and Iām super excited to be doing Creative Technologies!