Projects for the ITP course Introduction to Physical Computing
In the week following my last update I have made significant of progress on my Smart Tiles block board. Over the weekend I was ready to start milling parts and worked up the courage to use the Othermill Pro available on the floor at ITP. The process of milling with a CNC is new to […]
Over the last week I have made substantial progress on my Smart Tiles project. I did some play testing with friends to solidify thoughts around the interface. I have also continued to slog away in Fusion 360, finishing and placing an order for the PCB with OSHPark, ordering components from DigiKey, and preparing materials and […]
Earlier this year I took an interest in developing an educational toy that builds on traditional wood letter blocks. Seeing my younger family members interacting with screens I noticed a gap between the experience of the tangible toys they were given, which were often monotonous, flashy, and not very responsive, and the educational apps they […]
In this lab I learned to control the functions of a stepper motor through a motor driver board that handles power functions for the motor and communicates with an Arduino. The motor controller on hand was a A4988 Stepper Motor Driver Carrier from Pololu. The A4988 board pinout and basic wiring diagram here: My setup […]
In this lab I learned to control the functions of a DC motor through a motor driver board that handles power functions for the motor and communicates with an Arduino. The motor controller on hand was a A4988 Stepper Motor Driver Carrier from Pololu. The A4988 board pinout and basic wiring diagram here: My setup […]
This week in Physical Computing we learned about controlling devices that require more current than can be provided by an Arduino directly. Because Arduino pins are limited to supplying 10mA it is necessary to provide additional power externally for high current peripherals. To try this out I put to use a DC fan I pulled […]
For my second project in Physical Computing I continued to work with Mai on our Dodeca! We had some helpful feedback during and outside of class that gave us two specific development goals. The first goal was to add some kind of button input to give more control to the user to trigger events. The […]
This week I spent some time exploring two different methods of synchronous serial communication: I2C and SPI. Since I didn’t have the specific modules in the class labs I made use of two modules that I did have including an SPI RFID Tag Reader and an I2C OLED 128×64 Pixel Display. I have wanted to […]
In this lab I combined a number of capabilities to create a pointing and selecting device (mouse) that uses two-way (duplex) communication. Here is the circuit I used along with a Fritzing diagram: Code with some smoothing to the readings: Taking a look at the X and Y axis IMU readings in the serial plotter […]
Building on what I learned in the last lab about serial input from Arduino to a computer running P5.js, this lab was about reversing the direction and outputting serial data from P5.js to an Arduino. The goal of this lab was to feed input from mouse clicks on the canvas of a P5.js sketch out […]