Music glove - Mia Vu - Imee Lee

Video Documentation

Conception and Design

Premises of the projects:

We create this project not only to allow us as well as the user to have a fun time playing around  with different sounds, the bigger meaning is to remind people to appreciate things that are often taken for granted. Each percussion uses a sound from  that often annoyed people or no longer be grateful for - eyes are represent by a sound of a light switch;  ears are represented by fire alarm, as a student this use to agitate me, though I understand it's put in place for a greater good; etc. - we want to remind people how this common things have play a big part in improving our living standard but how they can become in there own little way.  Perhaps the sound created are not what typical music sound like but I believe that it is what make our projects  even more appealing, especially since the whole chaos and order ordeal is in theme with our GPS.

Designing process:

we want our design to remind people of body parts so not only did the percussion button is in the design of the 5  senses but we try our best to make it skin like. Initially our product is a bit difficult to use as the instrument sensor are that ergonomic and only people with a certain hand size can use it. Thus for the final process we make some small tweaks so that it is more usable.

Fabrication and Production

The most significant part of this product is to nail the camera tracking so that sound can be played accordingly to the hand movement. We use hand instead of sensors not only for convenient but I believe that it give the user more freedom in term of their movement. We also uses force sensors for the percussion for look purposes as we can easily put decoration on top of them. An ultrasonic distance sensor was use to control the volume of the audio, I use this sensor because the shape remind me of a speaker. So for us the criteria we use when select a sensor is concise in to 3 conventions: looks, convenient and usability.  Thus I believe that the chosen sensors fully fit our criteria.  A better substitution would be to replace the built-in computer camera  to a smaller digicam so overall our projects is not as bulky. 

The most difficult and essential part is the coding. Using the color tracking  code as a reference and make sure that they can track the color red and map the Y value with the corresponding pitch. Using a while function whenever the hand (the thing that is being tracked) move a sound will be played. A simple if condition is put in place so that a corresponding sound can be played.

Conclusion

Over all the goal is to create something that produces sound and I thing we achieved that. However there is still many functions that can be added to make it reach the full potential that we wanted it to be.  Perhaps our biggest set back will be the bulkiness of our product and as the wearable in an ideal world we should make it be able to extend further and guarantee to  a less confined by the physical space, and only then will it fully classified as a good wearable. To further elevate the meaning of this project we should add in further functionality like reverb  and repetition to further represent the repetitive beauty of the mundane life. If we're continue with the idea of using a screen then we should incorporate some visual aspect to heighten the art sense. Ultimately through the user testing I believe that our projects is straight forward and that people can figure out how to use it after a few minutes of observation. 

Appendix