#interactivegarden

Studio 5: Final Setup & Small Reflection  #18

Week 14 I am happy and proud to announce that we have finally completed our project. The interactive garden has been setup in the studio and all the function/feature have been installed, tested out and are working fine. We have also developed a contingency plan in case problems occur during examination, by making a video documenting about the context and concept of this project and also showing all functions working perfectly.  

My journey with my group throughout this studio project can only be described as a roller coaster ride it got lot of ups and downs. But, It was a great experience and I loved each and every moment of it. I would like to take this moment to thank my group members as each of us has contributed well into making this project happen. I would love to work with everyone again sometime.

Studio 5 project: Interactive Garden

Created by: Alan lau, Sunny Lin, Herry Shen and Hugo Chan.

Here is our video documentary that explains the purpose and value of this project and also showing how everything works when engaging/interacting with our interactive garden. 

Studio 5: Interactive LED Panel (completed) + small reflection #17

Finally I have made the interactive part of the LED panel work, but it is not entirely accurate. Here let me explain the process I’ve done to reach to this stage. 

After I finished connecting the sensors on to the Arduino board together with the LED panel, immediately I was facing one of my biggest challenges- to write the code for the interaction. The interaction is that when people walks close to the sensor it will detect the person in front and will then send a signal to the LED panel and trigger it to automatically display names of plants on the screen. The original code that I had written before was very unstable as the sensor would stop working sometimes. Not knowing how to resolve the issue I sought help from Stefan and Kim. They suggested me to try using state machine. Basically a state machine is a model of computation based on a hypothetical machine made of one or more states. Only a single state can be active at the same time, so the machine must transit from one state to another in order to perform different actions. Through numerous online tutorials, getting help from staff and by trial and error I was able to understand the state machine computing model and to incorporate three states in my code; the 1st state event is sensor detecting an object/person standing very close in front of it. Once this is done the state machine then transits to the 2nd state in which the person is to remain in position for about 3 seconds. After this criterion is met the state machine transits to the 3rd state which is to display on the LED panel name of the corresponding plant that the person is standing in front of it. 

I must say using the state machine has definitely improved the performance of the installed sensor but it has a delay that cannot be fixed if I wanted quality, so this interactive LED panel could only be deemed as a proof of concept rather than an actual final outcome. 

Today I visited JayCar electronic store located in New market to purchase a component, which is a much larger LED Matrix Panel than the one I used for testing & prototyping. I got it because It will be much more easier to see by participate from any distance while engaging with our interacting garden. I went back to our studio and begin implementing and assembling the final function/feature of the LED panel.

Since this one is more advanced, and bigger in size, wiring the LED was quite confusing as it required heavy wiring work. But was manageable, after proper installation of the all the wires, I doubled checked each of them was working properly by testing it on a multi-meter which there were no faulty wires and they were fine.

From there I moved on to the small section of programming process where I uploaded the code I had already written beforehand during my prototyping stage and modified it a bit and also changing the display to a different text in this case “Hello world”. As seen with the picture below its working. 

The prototyping stages is almost done and going really well for me. It has given me more understanding on how to better approach the LED panel function/feature im doing for our interactive garden. According to our schedule I will be installing and assembling the actual/final LED display panel very soon. 

Since I know when working on the final product of the LED panel is definitely  10x harder than the prototypes I’ve done. To stop myself from worrying and procrastinating, I have prepared beforehand by setting up my own personal workflow through using the Note taking application in Mac to record the detail of what needs to be done every day each week, including how long I should spend time on my tasks.     

In addition I have also used the Reminder application which works just like a clock to alert/remind myself on what needs to be done in the following days as well.

This week I have moved on to the next stage of the prototype, where I have added a extra component by using a switch button that links up with the arduino board and small LED panel. This part is quite important, because I’m trying to find out the workability of the panel. Based on how the testing goes it will determine if doing this function/feature is achievable. So in detail how I intended for it to work is when pressing the switch  the LED panel will display texts on the screen. This seemed hard at first but I got it working to how I wanted in a couple of days through self learning by following tutorials online for better understanding. The 2nd prototype I did is considered a success as I was able to get the information I needed.

Reflection

This week I have started my first stage of the prototyping where I used a small LED dot matrix to see the performance of the text being shown on the screen. Honestly this is my first time working with stuff related to LED and surprisingly the letters/characters being displayed during testing are very clear and bright. I can see that the texts on the dot matrix is definitely much more unique and eye catching than it being on a projector, Monitor or a TV screen. Doing this prototype has showed me that it will be useful and worthwhile to do this function for our interactive garden. 

What I must stress out is that during the actual installing and assembling the LED panel function I hopefully will be getting a much more larger LED matrix Panel to also show information's depending on our budget.

Since Sunny has the most experience on using arduino out of all of us and is also the only person that currently got the full set of arduino kit. He started his prototyping stage a bit earlier then us with the musical plant. Within two week he was able to create a fully functional and working prototype. This is done through reproducing a version of Disney’s research lab “Touche” a capacitive-sensing technology that is able to detect touch on any kind of object or surface. Sunny later changed and modified the codes to suit our project goal and requirement by converting the touch into musical notes.

Studio 5:  #11