Getting Started with Exemplar and Physical computing

This is a beginners guide to using Exemplar

Materials

What materials are you going to need?

• Hardware Computer Interface
  • You are going to need some piece of hardware that allows you to connect analog and digital sensors and actuators to your computer, probably over USB. There are a lot of different boards out there that do this such as dTools ,Wiring , Arduino, Make Controller Board, all sorts of pic and other micro-controller boards as well. We currently do not support the Phidgets interface, please see the Exemplar FAQ for more info about that.

• The easiest (and cheapest) solution is the Arduino and for this guide we will focus on it
  • You can buy the Arduino from Spark Fun for around 35 dollars

• Sensors
  • Now that you have your Arduino what are you going to attach to it to make it do interesting things? Sensors will allow you to measure different things like tilt, acceleration, force, bending, temperature, light, distance. Sensors have different ways of reporting their data - some use pulse width (many sensors from Parallax do this), some analog voltage, some a digital protocol, and some can be directly connected to a USB port (e.g., some Phidgets sensors). Pick sensors that report an analog voltage as these are the easiest to interface to initially.

• Here is a list of some basic sensors you might want, what they do and where to buy them

• Accelerometer - This sensor senses changes in acceleration, so quick movements, but also tilt because of acceleration due to gravity. There are 2 and 3 axis Accelerometer. Accelerometer are used in the Nintendo Wii controler, but not for positioning the curser - they use an infred camera and tracking software for that. These are really good for creating a exertion based game. You can buy accellerometers with differnt levels of sensitivity. We like to buy them from sparkfun.

• Bend Sensor

• Force Sensitve Resistor

• Range Finder

• Photoresistor

Other tools and electronics

• You may want to buy some other tools and electronics parts to help you connect sensors, build and test different things for your physical computing projects

• Bread Board

• Bread Boards allow you to quickly prototype electronics by just plugging in components into a small holes which are already connected. This saves you time because you don't have to solder anything

• Soldering Iron

• Solder

• Wire Strippers/ cutters

• Wire

• Resistors

Good Places to Buy other electronics

• Sparkfun
• Jameco 
• DigiKey 
• Trossen Robotics  - a good source for force sensitive resistors and other sensors. NOTE - Exemplar does not currently work with the Phidgets USB interface.

Installing software

How do install the software?

You will need to install the exemplar software, which is a plugin for eclipse. So you also must install eclipse. To get the arduino board working with exemplar you will have to install a program we wrote on the arduino.

Installing Eclipse and Exemplar

• Please see our Installing Exemplar page

Installing Code for Arduino

• To connect your Arduino board to Exemplar, download the file arduino-firmware.zip and unzip it into your Arduino projects folder. Open exemplar_a2d.pde, compile and upload to your Arduino board. All six analog input channels now send data to Exemplar. For more information, please see the comments in the Arduino file.

Connecting Hardware

How do I connect Sensors?

Using Exemplar with your sensors

How do I use Exemplar?

Sending Data to other programs from Exemplar

Good Outside links

• For a basic overview of what Physical Computing look at Tom Igoe's FAQ on Physical Computing

• The rest of Tom Igoe's physical computing site is extremely helpful as well, he goes into the basics of electronics, sensors and motors, micro controlers and has code samples.

• ITP's Physical Computing site is very informative as well, especially their tutorial section

• For lots of information on different kinds of sensors try ITP's sensor wiki