I connected two FSR sensors and a push-button switch to a breadboard and Arduino, for the purpose of seeing how to read and send multiple serial outputs. First, using the Arduino and pressing on just one of the FSR sensors, I wrote code that allowed me to view the changing analog values for that sensor [...]

In Processing, I experimented with digital imaging and the pointillism effect where an image is slowly created through the compilation of many points, or dots, on the screen. I used a photo from my honeymoon in Barbados that I took when I visited the Andromeda Botanical Gardens. Here is the original photo: In code, I [...]

I like community gardening spaces in urban environments, and I think it’s an interesting idea to mesh with technology. In particular, I love the notion of a community building something together, over time, that grows and changes on its own to a certain extent, but is ultimately shaped and manipulated by the gardeners themselves. A [...]

I hooked up a force-sensing resistor to a breadboard and Arduino in analog pin 0. I programmed the Arduino to read the analog input data in bytes, which sends out the raw binary value of the byte in ASCII characters. This form of output looks like mumbo-jumbo gibberish in the microcontroller’s serial monitor, however when [...]

A stop motion film created by Gabriella Levine and Suzanne Kirkpatrick. Animals Play Piano from Suzanne Kirkpatrick on Vimeo. “Animals Play Piano” is the story of Brigitte The Bear and her friends from the animal kingdom, mammalian and reptilian, who set out on an adventure together in the music parlor. Featuring Brigitte The Bear, with [...]

I read the first few chapters of Donald Norman’s book, The Design of Everyday Things (1988). He writes about how good design doesn’t need words or labels or instructions for how to use the object. Well-designed objects are easy to interpret and simple to understand, and they usually contain visible clues as to their operation. [...]

I love Old West Shoot ‘em Up games, and I wanted to create a way for people to test their quick draw shooting skills with toy pistols, so I built an interactive game called “The Quick and The Dead — Fastest Draw in The West” using the Arduino and some Processing code. GAME There are [...]

I hooked up a force-sensitive resistor with a 10k ohm resistor as my analog input, and a RC servo motor to a breadboard and Arduino microcontroller to see how analog input can control a servo motor. This was a really fun lab. The FSR sensor returned a range of values 0 to 800, but when [...]

I hooked up two photocell sensors and a piezo speaker to my breadboard and arduino to test analog input and tone output. First, I needed to find the maximum and minimum sensor values in order to map the range to the speaker’s pitch range. To do this, I asked the microcontroller to read the values [...]