EXPERIMENTING WITH SOFTWARES AND ARDUINO

I attended an Arduino workshop with Andreas, which made me realise the various possibilities of working with Arduino. Following that class, I dedicated the entirety of week 7 to experimenting with Arduino and attempting to create something tangible. Given that I don't come from a coding background, I had to rely on reference videos and source codes to help me navigate through this unfamiliar territory. It was surely a learning curve.

EXPERIMENTING WITH GESTURES

I had come across a lot of Arduino hand gesture tutorials and I thought it would be nice to follow that and see what I could do.

The tutorials I followed required me to download various applications such as Python, OpenCV, PyFirmata, and more. My initial challenge was to understand these applications and successfully install them on my laptop, which consumed an entire day as I navigated through the installation process. Once I had them set up, I proceeded to work with the Arduino hardware. This involved connecting LEDs to the correct positive and negative ports on the breadboard and then using jumper cables to link them to the Arduino board.

My initial goal was to work with hand gestures, with the idea that when I used hand gestures to count from 1 to 5, the LEDs would light up correspondingly. However, after spending nearly a day on this endeavor, I ultimately gave up. There were several elements involved that were beyond my comprehension, and there were additional applications that needed to be downloaded. Unfortunately, my laptop either didn't support these applications or I struggled to understand the instructions. It felt like I was diving into STEM territory rather than pursuing a design-focused project.

I decided to simplify my approach. I opted to work with camera input to control the switching on and off of the LEDs. Whenever the camera detected my face, the light would turn on, and if it couldn't detect my face, the light would go off. This approach allowed me to make progress and overcome the obstacles I faced with hand gestures and complex applications.

I was able to make the LED blink as it would detect my face but it would not go off because I wasn't able to connect my arduino port to python, even though I checked multiple times I wasn't able to identify the issue. So I just called it a day and decided to consult Andreas in the upcoming weeks for this.

EXPERIMENTING WITH SERVO MOTOR

As I progressed, I began experimenting with a servo motor, utilising a potentiometer to control its movements. The code for this setup was relatively straightforward, and it didn't take much time to implement. However, while analyzing the operation of the servo motor, I had an intriguing idea that I believed would be worth exploring further.

The idea that occurred to me was to take a piece of cloth and create a small patchwork using threads. I would then use the ends of the threads to connect them to the lever of the servo motor. The concept was that when the servo motor moved, it would pull the threads, causing the cloth to crumple. My intention behind this experiment was to see if I could achieve this push-and-pull movement on objects and potentially use it as an interaction method for Macbeth's objects in my project.

Although this experiment may not be the most aesthetically pleasing, I'm quite satisfied with the potential it holds. The way it operates aligns well with the dramatic elements of theater, adding a theatrical edge to the interaction. In my next steps, I plan to replace the potentiometer with hand sensors, so that if a hand hovers over the cloth, it will start moving without requiring manual control. This enhancement could make the interaction even more engaging.