remote control of your microcontroller
aREST library introduction
Homework :
✔️Reading : The computer for the 21st Century by Mark Weiser (pdf). This was written in the early 1990s, and set the stage for a lot of what we think of when we talk about connected devices. Think about ubiquitous technologies of today, vs those when you were a child. What has changed, what’s different? What are some technologies that have been around for a hundred year, or a thousand? What does it mean for these to fade into the background and become part of everyday life?
✔️Midterm assignment: For this project, you are expected to make a physically interactive system that responds to an input and produces an output. You may work in pairs if you like, but each person needs to document what they did. This needs to happen over a WiFi connection with your microcontroller acting as either a client or a server. Some examples : use the browser as a remote control for a multi-colored lamp, rebuild your love machine as a web app that controls the CSS of your page, make a device that monitors the environment of your home’s temperature that can also control the thermostat. These are some straightforward suggestions, make something unique.
The technical implementation does not have to be particularly robust, but the final project should demonstrate a level of polish that goes beyond a regular homework assignment. That is, there should be a clear mapping between the input and the output. What are the affordances of your project? What are the signifiers? How does someone know that there’s something happening in the background when there’s a process going on that’s not immediately apparent?
For next week (March 8), you need to write up a description of your project on the blog, and build a prototype of this. The prototype should have the basic functionality in place. If you struggle with this aspect, then perhaps your idea is too ambitious and you should scale back. Document what is working. Identify what you still have outstanding. Explain what you will do to polish the project, not just in code, but from an interaction and design perspective.
For my midterm project, I will be creating a temperamental sheep. It will be able to tell users the current weather by changing its color and behavior.
As the attached photo shown, different weather condition corresponds to a different sheep’s behavior. In order to let the sheep move freely, I will be using two normal wheels and one mecanum wheel. As for the color changes, I will be using RGB LED light and hide them in the sheep’s cotton. However, if only using weather API as an input, it would be hard to see the difference between different weather condition. To demo it more easily, I will be using photoresistor as an input.