Thursday, February 26

Today, we began with our new unit / project.
To begin with, we learned how to use the  Ai (Adobe illustrator) . Though exploring this new program, we learned how to:

- Create a new document (With units and measurements)
- How to create shapes
- How to edit those shapes
- How to add text and how to outline them
- How to print it

Home work:
Send Mr. Neal your shape. Please do not take a screen shot, but send the actual file.

Project Presentations

In class we did presentations of our projects so we could see what all of our peers were creating and getting feedback from one another as to what could have been better or what was good. It was good because we could then know how we could make it better from there or how we could improve it if we were to do this project again. It was overall a positive experience.  

Monday February 15th Class Blog

Today was our last day in class to work on our E-textiles. The goal of this project was to create a product that was an E-textile and will solve a real life problem, using LED's, Arduino and a Gemma. Although this may seem easy to accomplish many groups including my own ran into problems with the coding, design, lights, or something else. Our class thought of many different ideas such as a light up shoe, hat, pillow, suit case tag, cup, wristband and backpack.

One example of some problem's our class had was Kieran's group, which ran into problems regarding the lighting of their LED's. They found it near impossible to light more than 3 LED's with the same battery. It was only in the final minutes of class when they discovered a strange fact about their LED's. Only the white LED's will light up. This shows that even in the end of this project there are still many things to learn.
Another example of this is a problem my own group had. We couldn't figure out how to get the LED's to blink as fast as we wanted them to without it being plugged into the computer. Once we unplugged it the light slowed down we tried many different things however we couldn't figure it out.

All of the groups today made good progress and have completed or almost completed their project. The groups that have completed their projects have started to work on their presentations for next class.

Homework:

Presentation:

1) Keynote/Power Point

2) What is it? What does it do? Why?

3) Process - original idea, iterations, what changed based on interview?

4) Problems and Solutions

Tuesday February 9th

Working on prototype

Working on prototype

This class, each group created a rapid prototype of our final product. Our task was to make a 'draft' or 'sketch' of what our final product would look like, including the LEDs. We did this so that we could identify any issues early on, and get some feedback from others. 

Most groups split up the work - someone was working on the tech part of it (lights, coding, etc) while the others worked on putting the actual prototype together. We could use any of the materials in the classroom, although everyone chose to make theirs out of construction paper. When working with the LEDs and programming, we would just tape the lights on and sketch where the sewing thread would go so we could save time.

One of the group's rapid prototype. You can see they just taped
the LEDs on and it was made very quickly.

Sharing prototype

Sharing prototype

After our time limit of 20 minutes was up, we shared our prototypes. Each group had one member stay to present their product, and the others would rotate around the room and look at other group's creations. We were given one minute in each group to get a brief explanation of the product and what it does, ask questions, and to suggest ideas. 

Through today's class, every group was able to learn more about each other's products, and possibly gain some inspiration for their own. Some of the common questions that came up when sharing prototypes were:

• What color LED are you planning on using? Will certain colors make a difference?
• Is the battery located in a spot that will not affect the user's comfort?
• Do you have a plan to keep your product safe if it gets wet (rains)?
• Why is your user going to want this?
• Is it efficient?

By the end of the class, we had all gained some feedback, and some groups learned more about their product which they have to improve. 

Wednesday Feb 6th

In beginning of the class, Mr.Neale explained to us about the possible solution to our problems we encountered last class. One of the solution was to connect the USB and the arduino with an adapter instead of connecting it directly.

Then, we put the arduino issue aside for a minute and to move on to the next step, Ms.Sutter explained to us about how to stitch on neopixel to a fabric.


The diagram below shows where the string goes through in neopixel.

These are some things to have in mind when you are stitching.

Over these three classes, we learned what we can do and what we can't do. With that in mind, we went back to discuss about the big picture of our final product. Our homework for next class is to have these in our google doc. ↓

        

Wednesday, February 3

Daily Blog:

Attempt in making all LEDs light

Setting up materials

Programming Error Message

Arduino Programming 

Today was a Day 2 of our E-Textile Project. Here is a quick overview of what we are doing. In this project, our mission is to create a product(E-Textile) that will solve a real life problem, using LED's, Arduino and a Gemma. In todays class, we continued on making a LED light up, using Arduino. Although this may seem like a fairly simple task, in reality, it is a process of hard research, perfect programming and troubleshooting any minor error that could have been the cause to the LED not lighting up. To make you understand how hard it was, one group figured out how to light the LED. Unfortunately, none of the groups seemed to find success. There are varieties of possible mistakes that could of happened. Here are some example issues: skipping a step, wrong wire setup, faulty programming, hardware problem, etc. This task was much harder than expected, and although the majority weren't able to accomplish the task in this class period, we learned key aspects in designing, programming and persevering, even when the task may seem impossible at the time. Here some photos from todays class.

Class hard at work

Student taking photos for his Blog

Successful attempt at making all LEDs light

Monday, February 1

Daily Blog:

Today our task was to make lights light up using a gemma, and arduino.

We were supposed to figure out how to make something light up using the materials we were given. We started out by setting up our arduino. Then we we were to figure out a code through research or through the arduino software to figure out a light sequence.

Next we had to find a way to create power in the gemma board. Once we attached wires to the different channels on the gemma board, you get power. We then had to figure out how to upload our code to the gemma. To do this you needed to get a little red light on the gemma to flash and then you could upload.

This is when the issues came in. Whether it was the tinyusb was not connected or the code was not inserted correctly with the gemma. Almost everybody got stuck at this point in time with different setbacks to making the lights light. Next lesson the goal will be to troubleshoot the problems and to make the LED’s light-up.