Lab weeks: Reflection
Process
I liked working on this project with Jullya, we live close by to each other, so it was easy to meet up every day and just like me Jullya likes being creative. We were able to split tasks and each one of us worked on a part of this project. When we had an issue, we talked and researched it together and tried to fix them. Jullya was able to provide us with a space needed for this project and I provided us with craft tools such as paints, filling. We both came up with elements for this project and worked on them separately, for instance I was working on the distance sensor elements and Jullya focused more on using servos. We build the installation together; I came up with an idea on how to showcase this concept and Jullya recorded the video. What I realised during this two weeks was that working on separate tasks was easier as I knew it inside out, but was also able to get help from Jullya when needed.
Personal reflection
Overall, I am very happy with our experience. I am not good at programming and computer things, so everything we have done during this course was difficult for me to understand. However, at the end of the lab week when we had issues with our installations, I was able to understand how everything is connected and how it works. For instance, we used one Arduino that will do three things: sense a distance, based on that play music and change Matrix display. While it worked perfect before attaching it to the box, we had a lot of trouble setting it right when it was attached to the box. Because I learned how things need to be connected and what code triggers what, it didn’t take us long to fix it.
I was very proud of myself, despite not having as much interactive pieces as we wanted. We managed to use three Arduinos and only one breadboard. We were able to merge different codes and learn how they are connected together. Personally, I really liked learning about Arduino because it has a lot of amazing possibilities, however I really struggled with such a short time to learn it. In the future I will probably stay off it as computer science is just not my thing, but I did like to try new things and learning by doing is my way to go.
