For these week’s assignment I decided to continue working with the concept of the sloth that feel in love while holding hands, the last week I wanted the eyes to be white when there was no contact and then turn red when the switch was on, however since I didn’t know how to program the Arduino I didn’t do it. For this week I already have the required knowledge to (at least) try to program the LED lights in a more coherent way according to my concept.
I decided to make the eyes white in the normal state but when the switch was activated, I wanted the eyes to turn red but also start blinking and interacting with the white LED lights as well, in order to create a more interactive visualization.
Circuit with analog input.
I started by setting up the lab that we developed in class and started playing around with the delay values and the different outputs. I also wanted to start interacting with Analog Input, therefore I used a flex sensor to cause the change of colors. I started by setting up the board with 4 LED (2 white and 1 red) and connecting it to the flex sensor. I had to program the code so that the conditional “If” would recognize the bend of the flex sensor and in that moment start running the blinking code.
Arduino code
I faced some challenges while using the flex sensor, specially because I had to use reference code that I found in internet and adapt it to my own code, therefore it was very tricky to define the interaction that I was imagining, however I was able to do it by printing the Voltage and understanding how to define a condition that would happen only when the finger (withe the flex sensor) bends.
Testing flex sensor with glove
The final result is a Sloth that changes it’s eye’s colors when people hold hands (simulating to be in love) however it can also be interpreted as a sloth that gets very angry when the fist is ready to punch, which I didn’t anticipate but I am embracing the fact that my project is open for people’s interpretation.