Lab 2: Digital Input and Output with an Arduino
Lab 3: Analog in with an Arduino
Lab 4: Servo Motor Control with an Arduino
Lab 5: Tone Output Using an Arduino
Lab 6: Sensor Change Detection
I really enjoyed this one!
IDEA FOR PRACTICAL APPLICATION
I think that this would be much smarter with a pressure sensor but all I had at the time was a button. I’m always perplexed by how much water is “too much water” when watering plants. One of my favourite Instagram accounts determines her watering quantities by weight, ensuring that she only adds 5% of the plant’s total weight in water. You would have to do a calculation to convert it to the range of the pressure sensor, but I always thought it would be handy to have pressure sensors mounted underneath my plants so that I could get an indication light when that ideal weight was reached.
THOUGHTS ON OBSERVATIONS
The piece of interactive technology that I observed were elevator buttons. As I watched people use them I realized that, as they waited for the elevator to arrive in the lobby, they pressed the button over and over again, assuming it would change the speed of the elevator service, or really indicate to the electronic components that they were in a rush. Others, who clearly had more time to spare, pressed it once or approached the elevator and just waited nearby, assuming someone else had already pressed the button.
Many times the button’s indicator light would turn off even though the elevator hadn’t arrived in the lobby. This seemed extremely frustrating to the people waiting who then felt as though they had to start the process all over again.
It seems to me like this is completely within the issues that last week’s articles described. The communication between these buttons and the people they “serve” is not satisfactory enough to ensure a fluid transition between need and results. It was clearly an unnecessary waste of emotional energy for those in the lobby and added much more frustration than needed considering that the speed of the elevator service was actually quite good on the days that I observed it.
