Computing Project 2 – week 1 – Keaney/Scotten

This week Jemilla and I have been investigating how we are going to activate our next project by looking into the sensors available to us. we felt that with our first project being activated by a photo sensor, it wasn’t very playful and we wanted to make the project more interactive.

there were many options available to us and the conclusions we came to were as follows;

RFID – components too expensive

Secret Knock – Fun and applicable with what we want to achieve

Button Sequence – Uninteresting input

Impact Sensor – Tough to keep results consistent

Motion Sensor – Too many people will be walking in the atrium on presentation day so data could be corrupted

Proximity sensor – Lack of interaction therefore not enjoyable enough

Light sensor – already used with first project, not enjoyable enough and could be difficult to control with all the light in the atrium

 

After much contemplation, we decided that our input was going to be a secret knock. this would be activated by a piezo element, which we each have in our supplied Arduino kits.

A piezoelectric sensor is a device that uses the piezoelectric effect to measure changes in pressure, acceleration, temperature, strain, or force by converting them to an electrical charge. however, jemilla and I will be using it to sense a force when we knock on it and this will determine whether or not our device activates.