This week's assignment was particularly exciting because I was provide physical properties (e.g. light, touch) as inputs and see a change in the system in real-time. I really wanted to get the step response system working and so I milled the two examples from the class website. Just for a practice, I decided to try the phototransistor one before the other two.

Once I had pyserial on my computer, the hello.light.45.py code ran successfully and I was able to see graphical representation of inputs to the phototransistor (light).
Codes I ran (in terminal):

make -f hello.light.45.make
sudo make -f hello.light.45.make program-usbtiny
python hello.light.45.py /dev/tty.usbserial-A600C137

* In order to find your appropriate usbserial code, press "tab" key after "/dev/" in-line code above. It will show you all the names and from there you can find the second part to tty.usbserial.


WEEK 10: INPUT DEVICES

Part1: Milling Boards & Testing Phototransistor

After soldering all three boards, I needed to make sure that I had pyserial installed in order to run the .py program. As I got error messages, complaining about "import serial" in the python code, I knew that I needed to install pyserial. You can download pyserial from HERE and navigate into the downloaded folder and run the following code below. It is also documented in the pyserial website.

Next, I wanted to try the Step Response system. I got myself some copper tape that I first cut into small rectangles. I separated SIP Pin header into single pins for each copper rectangle.

Then I cut them into some random circular shapes and arranged them like a keyboard. I connected each copper tape piece with single jumpers so that I could have more flexibility. I wanted to see the difference in signal with different touch combinations. The result is shown in the video below.

Below, I have documented it in a video. I turned my desk lamp (yellowish light) towards my computer to face the phototransistor and then away from it to make it rest in a darker light setting. I repeated it several times.

Part2: Step Response System