#physical_computing

I started putting together a Micro:Bit based drone called Air:Bit. I think it’s great that companies and people are incorporating a Micro:Bit into their projects.

It’s like the Volkswagen of microprocessors.

It’s functional and provides everything necessary to get started with physical computing in a form factor that’s not going to easily fail and leave you in the middle of a project.

“The Culture” Dress with Afroditi Psarra

"The Culture" series is a collaboration between media artist Afroditi Psarra and architect Dafni Papadopoulou that aims to combine electronic handicrafts with parametric design and digital fabrication on an ongoing research on wearables.

The garment series is inspired by Iain M. Banks' space operas and his eclectic imagery of "The Culture", a future civilization of humans that live together with sophisticated machines in a world where everything is sentient. The garments can be perceived as living organisms that respond to the user's vital functions though movement. The garment's sleeves are designed in Rhino and Grasshoper and have been laser cut on leather and then assembled by hand in complex structures.

The wearables incorporate embedded Arduino microcontrollers and lightweight actuators created using muscle wire, kapton film and pvc strips, as well as a 3d printed earing that incorporates an pulse sensor.

Plug N Play 

Soft Controller for PC Games

Potentiometer Input

The potentiometer's middle wire connects to the ANALOG input pin #3 on the Arduino board. No need to add resistors, becaue the potentiometer itself acts like 2 resistors, in a self-contained voltage-divider circuit. When an LED is added with a 330 Ohm resistor, and the program is uploaded to the Arduino board, we can see the LED dim and brighten with a twist of the knob.

dim: more resistance

bright: less resistance

Trying other variable resistors

The  photoresistor:

Thermistor:

If the fixed resistor is changed, for example from a 10K to a 1K, there is less resistance. Therefore, using Ohm's law, R (Resistance) = V (Voltage) / I (Current), the voltage reads higher numbers on the serial output.

Invent Something! "The Muscle-o-meter"

WATCH VIDEO

I used the flex resistor to make a "muscle meter" which measured flexibility of the user's arm as they lift a heavy weight. Using the code helpers on the Arduino site, the result was measured in a print line displayed on the serial output monitor.

zero flexibility = no weight lifted = "Olive Oyl"

slight flexibility = some weight lifted = "Wimpy"

75% flexibility = weight almost fully lifted = "not too shabby"

full flexibility = weight completely lifted = "Popeye the Sailor man!"