#physicalprototyping

[ixdveronicaprototypes]

2nd workshop (Monday)

On Monday’s workshop we had a couple of hours time to finish up our projects. I have been working on our Arduino code throughout the weekend, to fix the loop and add the spacebar. Apparently the reference to spacebar was missing in the keyboard library documentation, but I did some research on the community forums and found the right substitute. However, we needed some help from David to fix the code, as I didn’t realise that every if-condition needed to be separated in curly brackets, that’s why my loop was failing, but I am happy I put several hours into coding on the weekend as I found different solutions and could easier understand David’s explanations as well, so yay to that. This is how our final project looked like:

The weight of the ball (clayball wrapped in copper tape) resonated with the metaphor of throwing it, but only later I realised we could have built a tube with the insides of it covered in copper, so that one could put the ball in the tube thus closing the circuit and bringing the prototype closer to the pinball metaphor.

Also, I was absolutely amazed and inspired by all the other prototypes that other groups have created: they we’re all so different, creative and unique:

Looking forward to another prototyping marathon on Wednesday!

[ixdveronicaprototypes]

1st workshop with David (Friday)

The first workshop in physical prototyping focused on some interesting design examples using data and processing to create interactive art as well as David showed the possibilities that Arduino boards open for easily creating different kinds of interactive devices. I will come back to his slides later as I got inspired by several of the projects. We got our Arduino Micro set up and tested a few short codes with LED lamps and a button.

Later we were working in groups with product design students to create our own keyboards that are programmed with Arduino libraries and then use those keyboards to create interactive games. Our group took the very simple old school game Pinball and managed to connect two controllers (via left and right arrow keys) as well as a way to release the ball (a space bar) using two Arduino micro boards.

We used a cardboard surface with copper cover as connectors to the left and right controller, having in mind that two different players would control each side. The surfaces are meant to be hit by a cardboard “drumstick” to close the circuit and call the left and right keys to work. A new ball is released to the game by touching a physical ball (with copper tape) on another surface that would help close the circuit and act as the space-key. We are very excited to present our finished prototype on Monday.

I was, in fact, very much positively surprised by how easy it is to prototype in Arduino, especially as there are libraries with simplified code for countless of functions, so its easy to make things come to life without having to spend many hours on coding. 

[ixdveronicaprototypes]

Introduction to Physical Prototyping

Today was an exciting introduction by Johannes to our Physical Prototyping course. He encouraged us to take notes, pictures and videos as well as sketch during the lectures/workshops and upload them to this journal to keep track of our design practise. Johannes stressed that we should dare to fail and fail a lot, learn by doing and be bold.