12/8

The group decided to meet up outside of class to make the last minute touches on the power point and to put together the enclosure and the circuit. Kelly and Emily had bound up twigs and bark to give a "natural" enclosure. Since our project 2 was put in a bird house, our idea of tree preservation was kind of hypocritical. Next stop...presentation day!

12/6 class

After speaking with Noah about his path with his groups amplifier, Josh and I gave in and went out and bought the pre-made amplifier. Basically what it is is if your in a speech and can't hear the speaker, this device has head phones that plug in and the microphones in the device amplify the sound for you. After purchasing it from Radio Shack, I opened it up and soldered an extension wire to the ends of the positive and negative connections. The device is powered by 2 AAA batteries (3volts). I then soldered leads for the input where the microphone is connected. The speaker we used for our project 2 came from a computer speaker so we decided that since the speaker was already out, why not cut the speaker plug off too! soldering leads from the speaker to the plug was our next step. Connecting and turning everything on, our circuit finally works! Today was a successful work day finally!!!

12/2 class

Today was yet again another work day, which we really needed! The amplifier circuit from last time did not work so we tried a few more today. Very stressful to not get the expected results. There was a distorted noise coming out of the speaker but who knows what it actually was. Almost ready to resort to the path that Noah took with his groups project!

11/29 class

after a nice long well rested thanksgiving break, its time for some work! today was another work day so we split the team up. Josh and I went to the engineering building and tried to create an amplifying circuit to project the sound better. Kelly and Emily did more research about the tree species and went on a walk to collect material from the woods for out enclosure. Josh had bought an IC chip (LM386) from Radio shack. The LM386 is a low voltage audio amplifier which can have a gain of 20 to 200. we found a pre-made circuit online that we tried but we were unsuccessful. back to the drawing board! 

11/22 Class

Today was a work day, we just found out that project 3 has been canceled and that we have to now "re-do" project 2 as if we are presenting it for a grant to make this art work a reality. Talking to my group (Josh, Kelly, and Emily) we went over the critique from our original project 2 and what we need to change to evolve this project into a proposal for a grant. Having taken our project 2 apart already, we have some re-building to do, although this might be a good thing.

11/14

Today is Sunday, and the project is due tomorrow. The final step in the project is just to put it all together. We have the code written for the arduino, the motion sensor is working, the wave shield is connected to the arduino and allows the arduino to play the sound file for our project. everything is working good. a problem we ran into however is our enclosure that we planned on using is too small for all of our components. To fix this, we decided to buy a bird house and put our components in that. the speaker we are using came from one of the computer speakers in Resnick at Josh's work station. with everything enclosed, we realized that it just isn't loud enough. With some purchased IC chips from Radioshack, Josh and I started working on an Audio Amplifier. However with the numerous attempts, it seems that the output that goes to the speaker is just too much for the speaker to handle. We have to present our project with a power point that has the audio file included so we can play it through the classroom speakers. Emily and Kelly worked hard to finish the power point and to paint the bird house. They did an awesome job!

11/11 class

Today was a full day of working on our project. Josh received the Wave shield kit yesterday. Josh and myself went over to Resnick to solder the Wave shield and Emily and Kelly gathered the data for the sugar maple tree. After two hours of soldering all the little components to the circuit board, our wave shield was complete and the facts and script for our maple tree was done. a lot of progress was done today! I have attached the photos of the process of soldering the wave shield. 

11/4 class

Well today was another work day. While Emily and Kelly continued the research for the facts about a specific type of tree, Josh and I started the programming. Josh also ordered the necessary part that would read the SD card that is going to have the WAV files on it. I tried to modify some code to allow us to involve interrupts in the code. For the switch we are going to use a motion sensor. Lets see how we do!

11/1 class

We finally found some answers and decided to go back to our original "educational tree" idea. instead of building 5 separate ones (which would cost us quite a bit of $$) we decided to just build one and call it a prototype for our idea. More importantly, we finally got the "OK" from the professors.

10/28 class

Today we were given our Lilypad Arduino kits. The kit seems simple enough. Running the jacket idea by the professors, we were told that we would need to figure out a different project. The idea was already used, so back to the drawing boards.

10/25 class

Today the whole group was here and we did our research for the project. We decided to use the Lilypad Arduino so that we can fasten it to the jacket easily. We looked up some material that we would need and also played around with some programs. 

10/21 class

Today the whole group was here and we were thinking about how to go ahead and create the talking tree idea. Josh realized that the project would cost too much money so we decided to continue our brainstorming. More ideas were thrown around and the one that we chose was a bike riders' safety jacket that would have blinkers made of LED lights and also a set of hazard lights. The lights would be on the back of the jacket and also the sleeves. The project seems easy enough to where all we would need to do is be careful with the programming.

10/18 class

Today we were given the project 2 assignment, the group I joined is with Josh, Kelly, and Emily. Emily was not in class today but the rest of the group started brainstorming ideas for project 2. Our assignment is to create a design that influences or makes people aware of problems around the world. After many ideas were thrown around, we decided to create a "talking tree" that makes people aware of deforestation and random facts about the types of trees. The tree would give a hint to which tree to go to next that would give more facts. This would promote exercise for those on the "hunt" for facts. 

Project 1

So after numerous circuits frying, LED's popping, and many trips to the store searching for simple electronic toys, my group has finally achieved circuit bending to the fullest! Of all the circuits that we have available, the first circuit that we were able to bend came from a simple electronic birthday card. We used a light sensing resistor to change the pitch of the sound and switches to turn the circuit on and off. The next circuit we were able to alter came from an electronic toy gun. We were able to add a switch to combine two of the shooting/laser sounds. We also have a touch sensor that lights up LED's from another circuit that belonged to a toy drum. Our future "instrument" idea is to create a responsive necklace that has numerous sounds and lights. Hopefully we will have a successful jam session once this is complete