Arduino & Processing Report

Transcription

1 Arduino & Processing Report Module: CS 6042/Workshop II Name: Colette Keely ID Number:

2 Table of Contents Table of Contents... 2 Table of Figures... 2 Introduction... 3 Aim... 3 Process... 3 The hardware... 4 Essential functions:... 5 The Software... 6 Processing... 6 The code we used to make the light blink: (LED light)... 9 Conclusion Reflection Future work: Appendix Table of Figures Figure 1 The team... 3 Figure 2 The toy (tracing track with cars)... 4 Figure 3 The arduino board and its functions... 4 Figure 4 arduino connected to breadboard with LEDs etc... 6 Figure 5 LED light... 7 Figure 6 Our blinking LED light Figure 7 Our blinking LED light aerial view... 8 Figure 8 Code used... 9 Figure 9 Fernando explaning the code Figure 10 Hard at work! Figure 11 The art of hacking

3 Introduction Arduino is a piece of technology which can be used to create interactive objects which can function on their own or communicate to another computer. Arduino can be connected to software such as flash, pure data, and processing. In our workshop we used processing. The arduino is connected to a computer via a USB cable. It may be used to control lights, sensors, switches, actuators etc. Code and tutorials for arduino are open source and so are available online, which makes it more accessible to the novice user. Aim The aim of the workshop we received in arduino by Fernando Orellana was to gain knowledge of what arduino is, how it works and the potential it has for creating interactive media. Process We brought in toys with motors to take a part and connect to arduino boards and used a programming software called processing. On the day of the workshop we were grouped into pairs, myself and Jill were paired together. Figure 1 The team 3

4 Our toys included a racing track with cars and an old gameboy: Figure 2 The toy (tracing track with cars) The hardware Consisted of the arduino board (below are its main components). Figure 3 The arduino board and its functions Other hardware we used was an LED display (actuator), motors, microcontrollers and jumper wires. Other hardware devices could include: 4

5 Sensors including Potentiometers, accelerometers, temperature, infrared and light sensors etc. Actuators including: light bulbs, motors, LED displays and speakers. Microcontrollers Switches Essential functions: The reset button on the Arduino board forces the board to stop what it s doing and listen for instructions coming from the USB port, you then have 6 seconds to press the Upload to I/O Board button and of course this is a very important function of the arduino board. The breadboard: The process of getting a circuit to work is largely based on making lots of changes to it until it behaves properly; it s a very fast iterative process that could be seen as the electronic equivalent to sketching. The design evolves in your hands as you try different combinations. In order to achieve the best results you need to use a system that will allow you to change the connections between components in the fastest, most practical and non-destructive way and so the Solder-less Breadboard if good to use. When you push a component s leg into one of theses holes it establishes an electrical connection with all the other holes in the same vertical column. 5

6 Figure 4 arduino connected to breadboard with LEDs etc The Software The software is the last component of arduino and this is a special program running on your computer that allows you to write programs for the arduino board in a simple language (modelled after the Processing language). Processing Processing is an open source computing platform. It is a programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for a wide variety of activities including: learning, prototyping, and production. It can be downloaded for free and luckily it is available for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. It can be used for a development environment for writing software for an arduino board. Programming an arduino involves the following steps: Write the program 6

7 Compile (check for errors) Reset the board Upload to board. You press the button that uploads the program to the board then the code you have written is translated into C language, this is quite hard to use in the beginning, but after some trial and error (mainly error) you begin to see the patterns and how it works. The code is passed on to the avr-gcc compiler that translates into the language understood by the microcontroller. Our first exercise with the Arduino boards and processing began with trying to make an LED light blink! Figure 5 LED light An LED light is an indicator that the arduino and processing are working together, another indicator would be a buzzer. The short leg of the LED is negative and goes to the ground. This is the first code to run that tests if your arduino board is working and configured correctly, so patients is required if you have not input the code properly and you are getting loads of errors. Not having much experience with electronics, this took a little while for me to do. 7

8 Figure 6 Our blinking LED light 1 Figure 7 Our blinking LED light aerial view 8

9 The code we used to make the light blink: (LED light) Figure 8 Code used When the code is in the IDE it then needs to be verified and uploaded to the board, to do this you have to press Verify and if everything is correct you ll see Done compiling appear at the bottom of the program. 9

10 Figure 9 Fernando explaning the code Figure 10 Hard at work! Conclusion This workshop gave me an introduction into the vast world that is arduino. It is possible, having gained the experience in this workshop to progress further with arduino. The online community that supports the growth and development of arduino is an invaluable tool to be introduced to for any further development I may pursue. Between blogs, you tube and Google, I will find some more interesting ways to utilize ardunio and processing. Reflection I spent a lot of time just tinking around with the boards and code to see what happens, this was both interesting and frustrating and gave a great opportunity to explore the capabilities and limitations of Arduino and processing and how they work together. Figuring out how things work myself helped to discover, and see the potential of 10

11 arduino and processing and what I could do creatively, this was driven by my curiosity. The collective knowledge in the class was great and it was very exciting to see when everybody got their toys to do different things. I learned how to connect an arduino board to the computer and upload. I also have an idea how to hack toys to change their functions (this involves using jumper wires to connect the battery and the motor). Future work: In the future I would like to maybe add more interactivity to projects using arduino. There are a host of built-in functions such as: mousepressed(), which controls the behavior of your script on click events; or mousemoved() which defsines what should happen as your mouse moves. Arduino is something I would like to use in future projects perhaps to incorporate sensors and work with video. 11

12 Appendix I found this code for looping video: 12

13 Figure 11 The art of hacking 13