For this week, the assignment was to learn how to create a circuit that used an embedded circuit as an input device. I was really inspired by Matt Keeter’s multi-touch touch pad, and have definitely been thinking about projects I could make with that. One idea was to create the touchpad and then program it to work with games that run on an iPhone with an accelerometer so that you could play games that require flying in 3D with just your hands.
Another idea I had was to create a speaker/mic system that would allow a user to be able to measure distance by essentially making a sonar sensor of my own. This is useful because then you can skip multiple frequencies to be able to get a really accurate measure of distance and use that as distance sensor - but it can also be used to play iPhone games that just require you to move left/right.
Milling the board
As of now, I’ve gone through and milled the example mic circuit so I can understand how that works and then I plan on pushing it further to work with a speaker as well. I was also considering just doing two separate boards to begin with and then coordinate over my laptop, but I know that will be slower.
Stuffing the board
I’m still working on stuffing the board, but will post an update soon!
Update (partially also in output devices):
I stuffed the board and was able to program it successfully! Unfortunately, the mic circuit is only returning 255 or 0’s, but nothing in between. I’m not too sure what’s wrong (photos to come!).
I tried to fix this in the output-devices week but was still not successful.
Second update, my final project has a lot of input devices that function properly! I was able to get it to work there - but unfortunately not in the shorter, smaller projects :(