Final Project- Pong

Working with Joseph Trotta and Julienne Ablay, together we made a game of pong. However we added more user interaction but incorporating a sonic range finder to track the movements of one of the players. In order to play, one of the players used their body to control the movements of the paddle/slider.
The range finder was mounted onto the lab table to prevent the a lot of movement to effect the finder's input. players will stand in front of the finder and as the move closer to the range finder, the slider/paddle would move upward, as they move a further away, the slider would move down. As for the other player, they would play using the keyboard.
For the code, the arduino would read in information about the player and read it into the pong project (made in processing). Those inputs would be converted into a range between 0-700 (The height of the screen minus 100 to accommodate for the length of the slider). The pong program was coded by the group.
To help balance this game, the slider controlled by the range finder moved very quickly but was hard to be accurate with while the slider controlled by the key board was more accurate but much slower. It is definitely interesting to both watch and play this version of pong and was a lot of fun to make.

470-12c ICE

Using the lab chairs and spandex filled with the dried beans, I came up with a fast pace competitive game. Similar to dodge ball and paint ball, players are place on the labs chairs are move around a field with "weapons" made with spandex and dried beans. Players roll around trying to knock another player off with their weapons. The last person standing/ the last team standing is the winner. However, players cannot push/kick or tackle the other players to try to knock them down, this can only be done with the weapons. The weapon will have a small pouch of beans, tied off and the rest of the spandex will be used as a sling. Each person has a certain amount of beans to make their weapon. Weapon size/weight are determined by the player. The more beans they use, the heavier the pouch will be but it will be more difficult to sling at people. The less bean they use, the lighter and easier it would be to sling, but it will be harder to knock people off. I personally think it would be interesting to play but potentially dangerous as well.

Microphone and Speaker Demo

I work with my friend, Joseph Trotta to make a device that insults you when you speak into the micro phone.

The wiring was very simple. We hooked up the microphone to an analog input pin, as well as power and ground. For the speaker, it is attached to a digital out pin, connected a resistor before reaching the ground.

By taking the input from the microphone, detecting a change in noise, we had the program say, "your breath stinks" to insult you. A very simple project but very interesting to work with sound with an arduino. I would love to play with sound more in the future.

Project Runway

For this project I decide to make a shirt that would react to the wearer's acceleration. The original purpose for this shirt was for cyclist to wear so that drivers can see  the cyclist at night. I intended to use Electroluminescent wire (EL Wire), However I did not have a proper AC to DC adapter to make use of the EL wire with my circuit. So I switch to LEDS.

Circuit not in shirt

There are two sensors effecting the light, a photo sensor and an accelerometer. The photo sensor effects the intensity of LEDs; the brighter the environment, the dimmer the LEDs and vice virsa. The purpose of this is to make the lights more visible at night time when drivers cannot see cyclist very well while at the same time, not distracting drivers during the day if the lights are too bright. The accelerometer effects the states of the LEDs. When there is a change in acceleration (if the cyclist slows or speeds up), the lights will begin to blink/pulse similar to hazard lights on a car. These are used to signal drivers to show that a cyclist's movements are changing and to be wary of that.

This circuit is kept in a small pocket on the back of the cyclist's shirt. The LEDs set outside of the shirt and are then connected to the board. This is all powered by a 12 volt battery, so it can be portable.

Blink Project

For my Blink Project, I created display to show the distance and simulate heart beat as two people come closer together. This is meant to be a visual representation of when to people in love come into close contact with each other.

Using two ultrasonic range finders to determine the users position, LED's would begin to blink. There is a total of 6 LED's connected to the arduino; three per ultrasonic range finders.
Once a person comes within range, the outer LED begins to blink. It blinks at roughly around 70 beats per minute to simulate a normal heart beat. As the person comes closer to the sensor, the first LED will stop blinking and the next LED will blink. The frequency of the blinking increases as based on who close the person is. Once close enough, all the LEDs on connect to the corresponding sensor will blink at an increased rate to simulate nervousness or excitement to see or be around the other people.