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Overall, I felt like this project was a huge success, as it not only did exactly what I wanted it to do, but it looked good too. I feel it perfectly represented the relationship between Arduino and Processing, and I’m very happy with the outcome.

Development, 16, Processing

Overall, I felt that this project demonstrated exactly what I wanted it to do. If I had more time, I would have liked to develop a visual cue for this too, such as LEDs reacting to the input.

A good thing with the Serial Monitor is that you can actually interact with. By using the code ‘Serial.readstring();’, the void loop is actually paused until the user gives the Serial Monitor some form of input. This can be used in many ways: data collection (surveys, questionnaires), interactive stories, etc. In this Sketch, I attempted to write a story that the user can get immersed in. The issue I faced was the lack of memory that the Elegoo Uno R3 had to offer: before I could even develop my story, the hardware ran out of memory and stopped me from progressing. So, while there are many benefits of Serial Input, having the ability to write stories is certainly not one of them.

Using an Ultrasonic Sensor, I created a motion sensor that lit up a set of LEDs whenever an object was placed less than 50cm in front of it. The general idea was to set up the Ultrasonic sensor to activate whenever someone walked past it - like a motion activated night light. However, because it worked using Ultrasonic sound, it meant that a distance had to be set for it. The struggles I faced with this was discovering that certain objects didn’t bounce the sound back as well as others. For example, if I placed hard wood in front of it, the sound would bounce back perfectly almost every time. However, if I stood in front of it, my clothes would muffle the Ultrasonic sound and prevent it from bouncing back at all. Then, if I placed my hand in front of it, it’s an uneven surface, so the sound would sometimes bounce back and sometimes wouldn’t. This made the Ultrasonic sensor very inaccurate, and it is unlikely that I would use it ever again.

A lot of maths went into this sketch. Luckily, it wasn’t my maths (otherwise I’m not sure this section of development would have been successful), it was a section of code found online available for the public to use. This code converts the input values from the thermistor into an accurate temperature in both Celsius and Fahrenheit. I only wanted to see Celsius in this sketch, so I printed the variable Tc (Temperature Celsius) into the serial monitor and watched as it showed me the temperature of my house.

As seen in the sketch above, the LDR is connected to an analog Pin and the data it takes in is mapped to fit a wide range of frequencies. I also attempted to alter the voltage of an LED pin depending on the LDR’s input value, but this wasn’t as successful despite my best efforts. These sections of code can be seen with two forward slashes in front of the code. The tone is played for 5ms and there is a 10ms delay at the end of the void loop to prevent distortion in the buzzer, and to prevent glitches or crashing.

For this one, I used a Potentiometer - which is a twisty, turning knob - alongside a buzzer and LEDs to demonstrate how data can be used in several ways from a single input. As seen in the Sketch, I mapped the input values to be of a wider range: between 0 and 1500. This would mean that there are more frequencies to be played with when using the data on the buzzer. Then, I also used an if/else statement to light up a green and red LED. If the potentiometer was over halfway turned clockwise, the green LED would light up. If not, the red LED would light up.

Similar to Development 9, using the pitches library, I’ve programmed buttons to activate the buzzer into playing a tone with the ‘if’ and ‘else’ functions. It works in the sense that IF a button is pressed, play the tone, ELSE, do nothing and continue to cycle through the sketch until a button has been pressed. There are 4 buttons, so there are 4 variations of ‘if’ and ‘else’. The notes I used are G, F, C and D sharp, which allows me to play the riff from ‘We Like To Party’ by The Vengaboys.

The project can be seen in action here: https://youtu.be/xu7Et3GWu8g

The sketch above is used to play a series of frequencies on the buzzer. The frequencies are converted to easier to understand ‘notes’ using the pitches library. This sketch will play the riffs from Teddypicker by Arctic Monkeys. The buzzer is very good for user interaction, as it can be used to play certain tones when the user does something.