Regional MusicScapes

I finally got the rest of my parts for my Seeeduino. The parts I ordered included a Grove Dust Sensor, a Grove Base Shield, a Grove Music Shield, a Grove LED bar, extra cables, breadboards, and resistors. The Grove Base Shield makes everything easier to connect. Everything is pretty much just plug and play. Then you just have to upload the coding script. I was able to find a sketch script for the Grove Dust Sensor from the Seeeduino website. I uploaded it and it worked perfectly. The sensor was able to outpt air particulate concentration level data to the computer monitor in 30 second intervals. With some tweaking, I was able to get this interval down to 4 seconds. Although this made the reading less accurate, it provided faster feedback to check that the dust sensor was in fact working. The hard part was now getting this to output music. Unfortunately, the Grove Music Shield came unassembled unlike the Grove Base Shield which was ready to plug into the Seeeduino Stalker. The music shield needed some soldering, but I did not have enough time to do so as the SoCal Maker Con is right around the corner. I was, however, able to get the Grove Dust Sensor to output the concentration levels to the Grove LED Bar. It took some time learning some basic coding, but I successfully programmed it. In the future, when I have more time, I will try to build and program the Grove Music Shield.

These Seeeduino modules are the technical component to my final design project, Regional MusicScapes.

Late Post: 11/08/14, SoCal Maker Con!

On November 8th, 2014 Cal Poly Pomona class LA301 went to the SoCal Maker Con to present our class projects along with my our built Seeeduino modules. The event ended up being much more interesting than I first anticipated. Robots battles, flying drones, and 3D printers were just some of the things that were there to see. I even saw some UCLA research student who created smart phone mods that were able to detect diseases in the unpurified waters. When I arrived, I was directed to the booth that was designated for us. Upon meeting up with Professor Lehrman and a few of my other classmates, I noticed that we were getting much more attention than we all thought we would. In fact, there was someone asking me questions about my project so much that my voice started to go. It was great hearing how many random people thought my project was a great idea. Our booth was visited by all types of people including electrical engineers, computer scientists, and other electronic fanatics. I was approached by a few people who were interested in taking my project to the next level. A venture capitalist named David Leech quickly gave me his email and asked me to contact him. Kevin from COMPANY was interested in putting my sensors into his drones and seeing where that project. Going to this event made me more interested in building Arduino type modules. There are so many possibilities that are now within grasp of someone who is not an electrical engineer or computer scientist.

Project Description

10/29:   The design of the landscape in my project will be influenced by the nodes that are to be installed within it. The locations of these nodes will also be determined by what they are sensing. In this case, the sensors are detecting air particulate matter as well as wind speed and intensity. Plant materials and landforms will be used to help channel wind against these sensors. For example, the use of dense shrubbery and berms can be used to funnel wind across the sensors in the landscape. They can be placed in various locations to get different effects. One node will be placed in close proximity to the 210 freeway to get a higher reading of air particulate matter. Another can be placed near the nearby water treatment facility. A third one could be placed within a park. Different placements of these nodes will ensure more variety of output data sent to the display. For this project, the display will be a musical. Data from the nodes will be streamed to the main node where it will be output as musical notes and white noise. Musical notes will be attained from the data of the wind speed and intensity while the white noise will be triggered by the amount of air particulate matter. The display will most likely be located in Pelota Park as it is within the center of all of the nodes. It is also close by to the residential neighborhoods allowing people to come hear the display without having to drive or walk very far.

Setting Up Seeeduino Stalker

Old Post: I finally received by Seeeduino Stalker v2.3 in the mail along with all of the other accessories I need to get it going. It took much longer than expected as the items were being shipped from Singapore I believe. Also, that country just had a major national holiday week or something so all shipping was delayed. Upon opening the package, I found all of the pieces that were advertised on the website. It came with the Seeeduino Stalker v2.3 motherboard, the UartSBEE module to connect to the computer for programming, a solar panel, a Li-Ion battery, and a waterproof case. I must admit I was pretty excited to open it all up. I just hope that getting it all together will not prove to be a difficult task.

It was not very difficult to get everything connected and to get a simple program to work. Just as we did in studio, I was able to get my own module to work. However, I do not have any sensors or displays that I can test at the moment. The only thing I can get going is the onboard LED. After doing some of the tutorials Professor Lehrman directed us to, I was able to get the LED to blink. I played around with the code and got the LED to blink in different time intervals. It took me some time to figure out how to get the battery to charge and how to get the Arduino serial monitor software to read back battery information. I found out that there is a little switch on the board that switches the board from 3v to 5v which made everything work instantly. I still don’t know how the solar panel works. I’ll probably have to program that too.

First Circuits

Old Post: Today in lab we attempted to create simple circuits using our professor’s Seeeduino and accessories. We selected a circuit that lights up multiple LEDs in various patterns. The patterns are controlled by the code that is uploaded to the circuit board via the UartSBEE module. After fiddling around, my classmates and I successfully uploaded a code to the Seeeduino and got the LEDs to start lighting up. We used a breadboard, resistors, LEDs, and cables to get this going. Another team of classmates also used the same accessories to create a different circuit altogether. Although the idea was essentially the same, the display came out completely different. Ours utilized a code that seemed more like a random pattern whereas theirs lit up sequentially one LED after the other. I noticed that certain LEDs did not light up as brightly as others. Most notable were the green LEDs. These were the dimmest. The red LEDs were much brighter. Perhaps there is a different resistance inherent in individual colored LEDs or maybe they are just two different types. I know that I have some multicolored LEDs at home that I will probably fiddle around with. These are multiple colors in one LED. Professor Lehrman has some of these as well, but the ones I have at home are much smaller. For the next lab session, I will try out a different type of circuit with a different display. I am interested in seeing how the solenoid motors work. Perhaps that could be an interesting display for my landscape project.