Archive for October, 2009

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PComp Lab: Using a transistor to control high current loads with an Arduino

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

cellphonemotorFor this Lab we learned how to control a high-current DC load such as a DC motor or an incandescent light from a microcontroller… in this instance I used a cell phone motor.

tip120The key in this lab is the NPN TIP120 transistor that “allows you to control a circuit that’s carrying higher current and voltage from the microcontroller. It acts as an electronic switch… designed for switching high-current loads… has three connections, the base, the collector, and the emitter. The base is connected to the microcontroller’s output. The high-current load (i.e. the motor or light) is attached to its power source, and then to the collector of the transistor. The emitter of the transistor is connected to ground.

I’ve always thought a Mac mouse would make a great mobile phone… here’s the first iteration in action.

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VisComm: Logo Design

Monday, October 19th, 2009

This week we were asked to take review the work of some of the world’s Iconic logo designers and present their work. There were some really impressive designers/artists/typographers to choose from, including Paul Rand, Milton Glaser, Paula Scher, Tom Geismar, and many others, but I was most impressed with the work of Miles Newlyn . His logos are centered around typeface, but he has the versatility to work in script, serif and san serif, all upper and lower case styles.  What struck me about his work is the simplicity and clarity of his designs and the fact that they easily translate when viewed in greyscale. Newlyn is also a font designer and has created several custom fonts… check out this font he created called Herceptin, which just happens to be “the first ever custom typeface designed specifically for a medical treatment” and is exclusively licensed to Roche.

Here’s how he described his creative process: “In designing a new logo, it’s crucial to represent the client, but also to understand the client’s audience. Much of what I do is typographic, so it’s important to understand how various people feel about letter styles. Different audiences see different things – these nuances are often a source of inspiration to either build upon or react against.”

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PComp Lab: Serial Out using an Arduino

Saturday, October 10th, 2009

In this week’s Lab, the goal was to send data from a single sensor to a program on a personal computer. The program will graph the output of the sensor onscreen. This is a very timely given that we’re doing our mid-term media controller project precisely relating to this… “common way to find out how a sensor’s output corresponds to the physical events that it senses”

Using the following code I get garbage characters…. what’s going on?

 int analogPin = 0;
 int analogValue = 0;

 void setup()
 {
   // start serial port at 9600 bps:
   Serial.begin(9600);
 }

 void loop()
 {
   // read analog input, divide by 4 to make the range 0-255:
   analogValue = analogRead(analogPin);
   analogValue = analogValue / 4;
   Serial.print(analogValue, BYTE);
   // pause for 10 milliseconds:

delay(10);

 }

The BYTE modifier doesn’t format the bytes. It sends out the raw binary value of the byte. The Serial Monitor receives that binary value and assumes it should show you the ASCII character corresponding to that value. The garbage characters are characters corresponding to the ASCII values the Monitor is receiving.

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