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yilin ye

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Week  8— 14

Mirror & Me

         with Haoren Zhong & DJ Kim

Tue Oct 22 -- Mon Dec 9, 2024
Final Project Documentation


 
Project Description: 
A reflected image of a mirror raises people's awareness of the surrounding space and their connection to others. A concave mirror encourages self-reflection by focusing attention inward, while a convex mirror reveals more of the environment and the people within it. Using the nature of reflections, we let users rediscover and rebuild their connection to the shared space and the community around them.

Interaction Mechanism: 
Based on the number of participants, the mirror bends in different directions and degrees. 


Initial & Final Sketches: 



User Experience/ Playtests
    v1 >> v2 (with the frame) >> v3 (on the wall)



Processes >> Arduino, and Assembling



Slider & Motor Mechanism
People detection using P5.js





Week 6— 7
Tue Oct 8 -- Mon Oct 21, 2024
Mid-Term Prototype & Documentation
   with Haoren Zhong & DJ Kim

Objectvie: 

We aim to create an installation that allows participants to explore their own sense of distance. Initially, we considered using a digital screen to generate reflections of the participants. The reflection would start abstract and become more realistic as the participant moves closer to the screen. However, we wanted to push the boundaries of physical interaction and make the entire experience more tactile. After brainstorming several ideas to replace the digital screen, we decided to work on an effect inspired by the 3D Pin Art Board toy. We chose this approach because it allows the image to move in three dimensions, making the concept of getting closer to oneself more dynamic.
 


Challenge: 

To be able to recognize a image from a pixelized image, it requires at least 1000 moving parts.

Due to the nature of the 3D Pin Art Board, we are primarily focused on the depth of facial features. We could likely reduce the number of pins to 81.



Mid-term Scope:

Creating a system to control 81 moving pins is not feasible to complete in 3 weeks. Therefore, we decided to focus on developing one moving unit that meets the following requirements:
  • Easy to scale up to 81 units
  • Capable of detecting the distance of the face, moving forward as the face approaches and backward as it moves away
  • Minimized space for each moving unit
  • Minimized cost for each moving unit

Mechanism Experiments : 

Radial Movement to Linear Movement: Slider Crank





Week 5
Tue Oct 1 -- Mon Oct 7, 2024
Lab1: Using a Transistor to Control High Current Loads with an Arduino

At first, the circuirt wasn’t working, caused by cable on the brink of breaking in the breadboard. So I changed the cables. 

The DC motor I first used have poor contact since the cables are not soldered,  so the movement is tiny. (also there were sparks appearing between the cable and the motor, a bit dangerous 😨 ) 

I eventually used a well-soldered motor, which worked so much better!
Lab2: DC Motor Control Using an H-Bridge



Week 4
Tue Sep 24 -- Mon Sep 30, 2024
Mid-term Ideation

Dancing Soul
                    —— to capture the soul of the dances

inspirations — Halloween, dancing machine, afterlife and soul, interaction and togetherness
keywords — distance, movement, sound

elements: 
  • Users wear necklace-form/ wearable of microcontrollers
  • Measure the distance of users dancing → Convert users appearances into particles in TouchDesigner
  • A camera that fake-captures the image of people and a monitor that shows the souls of the dancers on the opposite side
     → Maybe 3D print a cage that holds a vintage camera + iPad screen

technical issues: 
  • How should we connect multiple microcontrollers / sensors to 1 device?
     → Maybe use sensors instead of microcontrollers
    • GPS modules inside ESPs
    • Anything connectable wirelessly
  • Adafruit capacitive touch (from Angel’s proj)
  • Find out the best sensors / best workflow
  • Search ways of TouchDesigner x Arduino interaction w/o using webcam or kinect


What type of input: 
  • distance between people
  • X & Y coordinates of ESPs
  • different sensor have different feature >> making music together
  • [low priority] MEMS sensors embedded in our wearable components
    • accelerometer (measuring acceleration)
    • gyrometer (angular changes)



Week 2
Tue Sep 10 -- Mon Sep 16, 2024
Lab 1:  Digital Input and Output with an arduino

During part of the lab, when adding two LEDs for digital input and output, I ran into a problem at first, that only the yellow LED was on all the time, while the button is not controlling the red LED. 

After checking wires and positions on the breadboard, it’s becuase I did not link the pushbutton correctly with the positive and negative power with wires. 

Lab 2:  Analog Input

Problem Encountered: While setting up the potentiometer, I needed to refresh IOG configuration, also that potentiometer's IN and OUT pins need to connect directly to the voltage and ground rails on the breadboard. The picture in the lab helped jog my memory. 
Question: How does current flow in the schematic diagram? (on the right)

I tried to understand the role of each component. We realized that all the ground connections in the diagram are essentially the same ground, which completes the circuit. If the ground from the potentiometer isn't connected back to the Arduino, the circuit won't work when the potentiometer is fully turned off.

Next, I added a white wire to represent the output, in addition to the red and green wires.
  • Red: IN
  • Green: Ground
  • White: OUT

Initially, the LED didn’t work, and I couldn’t figure out why. Later, we discovered that I had set the wrong pin for ledPin(_) in the code—I connected the LED to pin D9, but originally wrote ledPin(2). Once I corrected that, everything worked!



Lab 3:  Sensor Change Detection

there are still some remaining question regarding the peak detection, noise, etc... to be asked!





Week 1
Tue Sep 03 -- Mon Sep 09, 2024
With the last time doing physics being almost 7/ 8 years ago, this week I really focused on getting back into it, refreshing with terminologies (and be mentally prepared to get hands-on!!)

Lab 1: Setting up Breadboard

While understanding the basics of a breadboard and how to set up for ensuring a circuit to properly work, one important tip I got from the resident, is what kind of wires are preferred under this situation. I changed the blue soft ones that I cut earlier with a sturdier green ones (which wouldn’t separate into branches). 


My first attempt to light up the light bulb did not work out, because I accidentally connect the “+” of the resistor with the ground bus on breadboard. I adjusted a little bit, ensure the same line of position within each element in the circuit. The red light’s on!


Lab 2: Electronics and using a Multimeter

I tried having one LED, and two LEDs in the same circuit; However, when two LEDs are together, the light became really dim. I also tried with the potentiometer to generate a varying voltage.
Lab 3: Switch

I began with experimenting different arrangements of switches — parallel or in series. I was confused at first by the way of connecting in a parallel simply from the visual on the breadboard —  I also made a mistake at first when I put the circuit together on the breadboard. Yet, I drew in a schematic and it became much clearer; and debugged by adding a wire. I also did the three buttons in series, as shown below. 

  

Project: Switch,  Taptap Housey Switch
                in collaboraiton with Haoren Zhong

This idea was inspired by Yilin's (and Haoren’s) desire to go dancing in the middle of doing PComp assignment. As both of us loved dancing, the shared passion sparked the thought of creating a switch activated by our feet. In house dance, the feet act like percussion instruments, so if we could turn them into switches, we could control the lights with rhythmic movements while dancing.



Process:
  • Look for conductive materials
  • Look for wearable materials
  • Test out the connectivity with two pieces of copper paper
  • Cut the materials in a shoe shape
  • Assemble them


iteration #1 ⬆️ we tried for the first time, but it wasn’t working

Iterations:

#1 copper paper folded on a piece of wood +another piece of copper paper taped to a piece of cloth
  • The light flashed inconsistently
  • Hypothesis: copper paper was not fixed in the position 

#2 copper paper taped to the piece of wood
  • No light
  • Hypothesis: wood and tape reduce the conductivity of the copper paper

 #3 removed the tape and the piece of wood.
  • Light flashed consistently with our rhythmic movements.



Obstacles:
  • Lack of sewing skills.
    • We decided to use staplers instead, to connect different parts of the fabric, and connect the copper (conductive material) with fabric. 
  • Attaching the copper paper to a piece of wood with tapes reduced its conductivity.
    • We decide to use the copper paper as the dance floor (for now) and it would be easier to carry around as well. 



©yilin yeto imagine and reimagineNY | Sept 2024
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