Idea - Final Project Step 1
I am working with Sydney Meyers on my physical computing final.
I had an idea to create an interactive wall of lights that could be controlled in a couple of different ways. One was blowing on a sensor, and another was using a control panel to adjust the lights in front of you.
Then I started thinking about a light panel that wouldn’t be a single person experience, rather a necessary multiple user participatory object.
I imagined a wall of lights that one person views from one side and another person controls from the other side. The person viewing the changing lights would not be able to control the lights and the person controlling the lights would not be able to see the lights.
When Sydney and I met up to start talking about our ideas I mentioned the light wall and Sydney explained her interest in exhibition design and museum accessibility — these are also topics that I am very interested in. We decided to expand the light wall idea to include communication between the view and the controller. Now the viewer would choose a painting’s mood to try to build and then give feedback to the controller to explain what the viewer was seeing. The controlled would be learning through the eyes of the viewer what manipulations they were making on the light wall and which buttons controlled which manipulation (all buttons would be unmarked).
ideally this wall would be quite big, it would fill the center of a large room.
For our pcomp final, however, we will make a small prototype tabletop-version:
We are going to use neopixels mounted on foamcore and covered by semi-transparent acrylic (to diffuse light) on one side and wood on the other side. The control panel will be made of wood with the knob, buttons and slider set in.
The control panel will control the light group selection, and the hue, saturation and brightness.
The neopixels will be laid out in a grid and then grouped in a scattered way. Each group can be selected by one of the selector buttons. If the button is selected then the user can manipulate the HSB for those pixels. In the example below group 3 & 6 are selected meaning the user can change their HSB, when the user decides makes a new selections groups 3 & 6 maintain their last state and new pixel group’s HSB are changed.
Timeline:
11/3 - Send email to Jeff with idea and receive feedback about any needed changes
11/5 - Meet with Aiden about project and receive feedback about any needed changes
11/5 - Oder neopixels and work with them this week
11/14 - Paper proto due
11/14-12/15 - Update based on experience using in class. Build final project including wall structure and control box.
12/5 - User testing
12/5-12/15 - Make any needed adjustments
12/12 - Project presentation
BOM:
Neopixels (and wires to connect rows)
Foamcore
Cemi-transparent acrylic
Wood (for back of wall and control box)
Controls — 360 degree knob, 9 buttons, 2 sliders
