TutorialPuttingItAllTogether

We've provided you with the basics of how switches, sensors, motors, and LEDs work. You should now have all the necessary skills, tools, and knowledge to build your own physical computing projects.

The real creativity comes in how you couple these basic techniques to the real world to sense real phenomena and effect real change.

 

Try re-building a simplified version of the slouch-aware chair I demonstrated at the beginning of this tutorial. Here's one idea for a system that warns you when you're leaning in too close toward your monitor (bad for your eyes!).

• Use an IR distance ranger on the screen bezel to sense how far you are away from it.
• Maybe add an FSR on the palm rest of your keyboard or laptop to sense if you are using the computer at all.
• Use either a servo motor to build a physical gauge or dynamic graphics in processing that warn you visually when you are getting too close.
• If you ignore those warnings, start buzzing the vibration motor. Tape the case of the motor to your keyboard so you can feel the vibration through your fingertips.

 

Some other ideas:

Make a fitness game -

write a game that counts how many jumping jacks you can do in a minute. An accelerometer taped to your hip can detect hen you jump/land.