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CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
When meeting up to discuss about the possible ideas of this project, me and my partner wanted to create a product that can target a relevant problem. Superficially we want to create a 'deep' invention. Thus our product take inspiration from our own problem growing up and become a more concerning dilemma due to social media. The lack of face to face interaction have always been a concern, especially growing up me and my partner lack times spending with our families member due to their busy schedule. ultimately we want a project that will encourage human interaction.
CONCEPTION AND DESIGN
Our product act as a visual tracker. We want to create an invention that remind people to communicate with their love one. Thus we have a motion sensor and a buzzer that would create sound to notify them whenever the pass through our product. The state of our creation is a representation of the number of interaction they have through out the day. We use different servo to turn the cardboard leaves around to reveal a different color. this suppose to represent the tree (a status of your interaction) rotting and broken. To establish an interaction two people press on the apple button to increment an count, if the count equal 3 at the end of the day (timer) the tree stay green. We add in a rock, paper, scissor function when the two button is press for the user to add in a little fun in their own way.
FABRICATION AND PRODUCTION
Due to the problem with power source our product fail during both user testing section. Thus we have to rewire them to has a sufficient power. The most crucial part of our projects is the movement of the servo as it will determine the color of the tree. Thus to make sure that the servo can turn perfectly without interfering with the tree, we draw a quick sketch labeling the outline of the tree and where to place the servo. so that in the final product they can move into the correct position. The code below control the 180 servo controlling the leaves
The second crucial components of this product is it ability to keep track of the interaction and time. To keep track of time we use millis(), this function keep count of the time ever since the product started. In order to restart the time I use a while loop and a place holder call timer. The timer variable will take the value of millis in the beginning and after every loop to make sure that the time can restart every time.
Two button and a count variable were use to keep track of the interaction through the set time. The button is make using copper tape, when it is press the copper tapes touch, creating a close loops thus when using a digital read it will return "1" as the value. Therefore using a simple condition I was able increment the count by one when both button return a high value.
To add in a little tweak, every interaction, a randomize rock paper scissor happens. The two 360s servo turn clockwise spin for a random amount of time using the random function, then stop to reveal an answer.
To better remind our users, we use a motion sensor to create a sound reminding the users of its existence, thus encourage them to interact.
conclusion
conclusion
At the end of the day our product can only serve as a reminder and encouragement. Thus it is still fully base on the honesty and willingness of the users, as there are no ways for our product to guarantee that the interaction are legitimate. In addition, our products are not ergonomic and the users might not be able to figure out it use without instructions. Therefore, in order to improve our overall design, perhaps some checking system need to be introduce to check the validity of each interaction. This can be in place by using a mic sensor, to measure the duration of there talk and it can only be count as an interaction after a set amount of time. A second timer should also be introduce to measure the time between each interaction to make sure that 3 separate interaction has been made.
reflection
Through out our projects we faced many obstacle. First, due to insufficient power supply the servos can not function. To combat this, we rewire the products to use two Arduino board and an external power source. The second problem occur during the coding process. In the beginning, I wanted to follow OOP coding by creatings differents classes and functions, while it is easy to have one class using the methods and instance field of another, problems occured when I wanted to add in a third class. I originally wanted to pursue this as encapsulation could make the code and the relationship between each component to be clearer. Although in the end I decided to just put it all in one sketch. The last problem occur during the finishing touches added to the appearance of the tree. As we originally plan to use clay, however we not only did the clay not stick but it we also do not have enough materials. Fortunately in the end we find suitable grass scrap to use.
Appendix
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