HOW TO MAKE (ALMOST) ANYTHING

contact // irina chernyakova

1 [0912] FINAL PROJECT PROPOSAL 2 [0919] COMPUTER CONTROLLED CUTTING 3 [0926] ELECTRONICS PRODUCTION 4 [1003] COMPUTER CONTROLLED MACHINING 5 [1010] FINAL PROJECT UPDATE 6 [1017] MOLDING / CASTING / COMPOSITES 7 [1024] EMBEDDED PROGRAMMING 8 [1031] 3D SCANNING + PRINTING 9 [1107] INPUT DEVICES 10[1114] OUTPUT DEVICES 11[1121] INTERFACE + APPLICATION PROGRAMMING 12[1128] MECHANICAL + MACHINE DESIGN 13[1205] NETWORKING + COMMUNICATIONS 14[1212] FINAL PROJECT DEVELOPMENT 15[1219] FINAL PRESENTATIONS

1 (eagle + led array update)

I spent a lot of time last week and this week learning Eagle by reverse-engineering Neil's boards. I re-made the LED array board and worked on the sound board. I tried to simply replicate Neil's boards in order to make sure all the components were correct and in place – not too much redesign! I also went back the LED array and tried to re-write the code utilizing Toni's technique from last week -
LED Array, Charlieplexing
Sound MIC

LED Array Variation

2 languages & interfaces

Since I have no experience with languages or application programs, I decided it would be wise to spend most of my time looking through the various options Neil presented to us last Wednesday. I initially set out looking for a drag and drop program – the simplest tool for non-programmers, and wound up stuck in several environments. I went through the basic tutorials for PureData, Max, Scratch, and Processing (read this interview with Tom Igoe). I found a couple of very helpful websites for learning processing – Daniel Shiffman's Learning Processing, this YouTube channel that Shaul posted. I'm very interested in learning to use PureData, but spent most of time with Processing tutorials since it seems most widely-applicable.

After learning about the basic coordinate system, setup vs. draw, I decided to create an application for the temperature sensor I made for the Inputs week. I wanted the application to read the data values and relate the low values, cold temperatures to the color blue, and transition from blue to red for high values, or warmer temperatures.

RXTX ?
I received the message below when trying read the data from the temperature sensor. I researched quickly, downloaded the files from here, but could not figure out the right directory in which to place the files. I followed the suggestions on the Processing wiki and Forum, but no success. (serial issues, version mismatch on forum)

I tried to understand several types of colorchange/gradient codes, such as Linear Gradient, Vertical Gradient, Color Change w/Click, among many others – to figure out how to write the changing color in response to temperature inputs, but no luck.. Takes more than a week! Some of the attempts are below..

After all of the issues above, I decided my time would be best spent in various libraries and tutorials, trying to understand the language and variety of applications possible with Processing.

I played around with drawing applications etc,.. I found this weather application from Daniel Shiffman's website that reads a Yahoo XML feed and displays a thermometer and weather conditions based on zip code.



Cambridge, Ithaca, Juneau, Honolulu