Hi guys,
Just wanted to thanks for everything - Andrew, Justin, and all you classmates. Thanks for all your support, and good luck to everyone!
David Continue
Added by David Bartolo on November 14, 2008 at 10:18am —
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Came close to leaving the course last night. Trying to fit in work, family, study sometimes gets too much. But talking to friends helps, and I am now paring down my ideas and working from most to least essential.
A) Most essential
Most essential for me is an inside bin display that leaves a trackable pattern on the bin lid based upon daily data, and allows 2 weeks to be compared.
This will be acheived with a rotating turntable with salt water solution, valve solenoid and eyedropper bott… Continue
Sorry I couldn't make it last night - I would have liked to get some stepper driving tips, but my son was ill. Nevertheless, I can post my latest thoughts on the internal bin.
the image below shows the individual components. I plan to use gravity-fed liquid through two valve solenoids. This will either dispense coloured liquid onto canvas on top of the bin, or maybe onto the bin lid itself. The colours will represent alternative weeks of rubbish.
Liquid will be directed via a movable nozzle to… Continue
Added by David Bartolo on October 23, 2008 at 2:19pm —
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Thanks for the feedback last Wednesday guys. I find this a very iterative process. I am loathe to come up with a design that will be impossible to create, and so I am continually testing small elements of things I may be able to create. So far I have proof of concept for:
* Filling outside bin and displaying LEDs
* Wireless transmission between two arduinos
* Melting wax using a Peltier device
I am currently ripping apart printers and CDROM drives - maybe on Wednesday I could have a go trying… Continue
I was away for much of last week, but have managed to find an old printer and think more about my rubbish idea.
I think the inside display will have a platform which the rubbish bin can sit on, rather than having to design something that will attach to different bins. The display will rise above the rear of the bin so it can be seen, and will generate wax pattern over time, based on outside bin fullness. I have a transmitter/receiver from Jaycar and would be interested in playing around with the… Continue
In this tutorial I detected the fullness of a rubbish bin, and when it ws full, activated a relay which turned on a Peltier device (heater/cooler) to start melting some wax. A LED shows when the relay is on, plus a thermistor sitting on the Peltier device was used to detect the temperature (currently displayed on a multimeter as a resistance, which drops as the device heats up). The Peltier draws about 1.5 Amps in current configuration, which is why the relay is required. Sorry about some of the… Continue
I talked with Michael about the shower cutrain idea (see his blog post), but at this stage my project looks at rubbish (and recycling), to encourage people to put out less by visualising their rubbish output. It consists of several aspects:
1) The outside bin.
This bin will have sensors to indicate how full it is, a sensor to indicate when it is being emptied, and a display on the outside that indicates how full it is (as per the diagram). In this way, it will be possible for anyone to l… Continue
Here are 3 versions of using an analogue input:
1) A simple POT controlling the fading of an LED using PWM
2) An LDR (Light Dependent Resistor) under a bin lid - opening and closing the bin changes the fade of an LED
3) 3 LEDs which indicate how far open a bin lid is (based on an LDR)
The video is a bit shaky (my sidekick wasn't available!).
Sketches are attached also below the video
… Continue
Added by David Bartolo on September 23, 2008 at 2:00pm —
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Here is my presentation for the project ideas. Thanks for thevdiscussion and feedback. I think I will go with the rubbish idea, but still thinking about the main display. The bin will have LEDs up its side (or similar), but the inside display I need to think more about. Something with history...
… Continue
Added by David Bartolo on September 11, 2008 at 2:03pm —
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Here is my tutorial 2! I created a counter so that every time you hit the switch it sets up a differrent state for the LED:
0 = OFF
1 = DIM
2 = BRIGHT
The counter starts at 0 then increments when the switch is hit until 2 and then starts again. Have a look at the video - this also has the sketch and how it works at the end, so keep watching!
David
By the way, due to the video frame rate, the LED may appear to flash a bit.
Continue
Added by David Bartolo on September 7, 2008 at 11:16pm —
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I placed my tutorial blog on my page, and for some reason it hasn't appeared here.
But if you go to David' page, it is there.
To summarise, I have got the Arduino to count up to the value typed in, with a green flash to separate each digit.
Details on my blog.
db Continue
Added by David Bartolo on August 20, 2008 at 1:02pm —
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I heard an interview once with Nicolas Negroponte. He was talking about his book "Being Digital". This was the first I had heard of pervasive or ubiquitous computing. Computing that was everywhere, around the user, working behind the scenes.
According to Wikipedia, Mark Weiser coined the term ubiquitous computing.
He reckoned:
"The purpose of a computer is to help you do someth… Continue
Added by David Bartolo on August 5, 2008 at 1:30am —
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I'm not sure where this will appear, but this is one way to find out!
If you look at my picture closely, you'll see I have a Wiimote strapped to my head. This is from last Semester's "Designing Immersive Systems" class - there is some great stuff being done out there using Wiimotes. I used it to navigate through a virtual world that I created in Macromedia Director. The world lets the user move around by rotating their head and they can walk-in-place with special footpads I made and hacked into… Continue
