Post date: Dec 22, 2016 5:5:8 AM
After the joystick module exploration, I decided to apply the module to track eating behavior of the squirrels. Initially, my interest in squirrels was from pure curiosity, as they are unique beings that can be easily sighted only in "Western" cultures, or Northern American and European countries. Since eating is one of the most vital action, I thought there would be a number of interaction between my sensor and the squirrels.
My initial prototype had a joystick-like module that I created with a ball bearing and four aluminum connectors under a tilting plate. However, wiring the apple to stabilize and bound it to the sensor and the tilting plate brought some concerns from the peers with the safety hazards for the squirrels. In order to eliminate any misunderstandings of the sensor, I used the commercial joystick to simplify the sensor and changed the shape of the "lure" to be less obstructive.
Based on the data I've collected, I tried with different variation of graphs to represent their movement, in which there are two different types of graphs in my midterm poster. One on the left, I simply traced the movement by the directions of x and y axis and then exploded the graph to z axis, adding a time variation. Then, the second graph is showing how much the points has been repeated in a location over 4 hours.