The goal of the project- Try the basic set up for final project form, and two robotic plants with different motion included. One is made with the stepper motor(Ferns) and the other one is muscle wire(Flytrap). In this iteration, I want to test the light and visual effect of this project as well as differentiate random and systematic movement of robotic plants. Also, one important implementation of this iteration is to add the interaction part, using Kinect and Unity to communicate with Arduino, audiences can interact with this set by walking around in the room.

Main components:

Arduino UNO

Xbox Kinect 2

0.012mm muscle wires

tip120

330-ohm resistor

12v stepper motors

motor shield for stepper motor

12v 6a power source

How it works:

For the demo can see the playtest video below. Kinect– using the infrared camera to detect audience’s body skeleton and find the x, y, z-axis. Unity– using the c# program to enable the trigger function when audiences touch the certain area  (there are five little yellow people models spread on the screen representing different location). When the models being triggered, Unity will send a byte to the serial monitor in Arduino. Arduino– in code, there is a processing message which will start to heat up the wire and rotate the motor, by typing “on” in the serial monitor, the function loop will start to run. To conclude, by connecting these three different platforms, I can achieve an indirect interaction without using a sensor. For the final setup, the audience will not see the unity interface so that they can just walk around, being captured by Kinect, and the robotic plants will move based on their movement without notice.

Circuit and CODE:

The following circuit includes the detail for connecting muscle wire correctly, note that there are two sides of muscle wires, one side should go to the middle leg of the transistor(TIP 120), and the other should go to the positive side, which is 12v 6a (+) in this circuit. The other two legs of transistor go separately to GND & resistor- Pin, the reason for pin leg output can actually control the transistor and open the circuit for electricity to go through the wire. Be very aware of the external power source, don’t connect it to Arduino unless you want to burn it. Just connect positive and negative side to breadboard like how you use 9V battery to power up the circuit.

CODE in Arduino:

#include <Stepper.h>

const int stepsPerRevolution = 200; // change this to fit the number of steps per revolution
// for your motor

// initialize the stepper library on pins 8 through 11:
Stepper myStepper(stepsPerRevolution, 8, 9, 10, 11);

String buf;
char c;
int flower=6;
int flower1=4;
int flower2=5;
int led = 2;

void setup() {
pinMode(flower,OUTPUT);
pinMode(led, OUTPUT);
// set the speed at 60 rpm:
myStepper.setSpeed(60);
// initialize the serial port:
Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() {
while (Serial.available() > 0) {
c = Serial.read();
if (c == ‘\n’) {
processMessage();
buf = “”;
} else {
buf += c;
}
}
}

void processMessage() {
Serial.println(“processMessage”);
if (buf.equals(“on”)) {

//0.005″wire
digitalWrite(flower,HIGH);
digitalWrite(led,HIGH);
//
digitalWrite(flower1,HIGH);
digitalWrite(flower2,HIGH);
delay(3000);
digitalWrite(flower,LOW);
digitalWrite(led,LOW);
digitalWrite(flower1,LOW);
digitalWrite(flower2,LOW);
delay(8000);

for(int i=0;i<6;i++){
// step one revolution in one direction:
Serial.println(“clockwise”);
myStepper.step(stepsPerRevolution);
delay(500);

// step one revolution in the other direction:
Serial.println(“counterclockwise”);
myStepper.step(-stepsPerRevolution);
delay(500);
}

}
}

Problem encountered:

I spent a lot of time to caculate and test the right amount of electricity for the wire. Using the specs chart of wire and the formula of voltage caculation from computational craft class slides really help me alot.

For the playtest plan, I record a simple demo video to show the interaction. I would like to know people’s reaction toward the movement of plants, it’s interesting to look at or not. Also, I am curious about if they are aware of what interaction they are adding up to this system.

Description of the project:

The goal of this assignment is to build your own combination locker with led and buttons. For me, I want a combination locker which can use keypad numbers as input and can be controlled by my cell phone. So I choose to use 1Sheeld module and it’s application to build my own combination locker.

List of components:

• 1sheeld– a wireless shield which can easily attach to Arduino, with the customized application, you can use your cell phone to control Arduino.
• Arduino Uno x1
• Breadboardx1
• 200-ohm resistor x1
• Red led x1
• jumper wires

How it works:

first of all, attach the 1sheeld to Arduino, and then connect LEDs to the pin assigned. After uploading the code to Arduino and 1sheeld. You can open up Bluetooth to search 1sheeld and connect to it. Then open the keypad shield in the 1sheeld application, enter the password you set to open the lock. In this project, I used red led to indicate “the locker is not opened”, and it was set it to be lighted up as default. When the user enters the right password, the red light should be turned off.

In the code part, using flag function (in here I put “iterations” to represent it ) to set your password. I set the password to “1220”, and every time you press the right keypad the flag will plus one. After fulfilling the 4 iterations (0~3), the red led should turn off.

Because of the flag function, the four-digit password should be checked each time, the wrong input such as “4593”, “2340” will not let the red light go off. See the following code for the details:

Any problems you encountered and/or solved:

My original intention is to use two different led lights, a red one for wrong and a green one for right. But no matter how hard I tried, 1 sheeld seems to not able control two LEDs at all. What I tried to debug including change all the components including the breadboard, LEDs, wires, and different pin. In the end, I only use one led to represent the lock status.