I guess the whole project has come to an end. A good ending. It was a lot of sleepless nights, scanning, sketching, inking, photoshoping, etc. But I'm happy the book turned out well. Here's the link to my artworks.

Enjoy!

ComicBookProject

1000 ships made out of manila folder

http://manilathousandships.wordpress.com


-C. Paula de los Angeles

Noise Machining

Over the weekend, we collected a lot of parts and did most of the physical building. Also hacked the Jedi Force Trainer toy. Last night, debugged the code and setup the noise machine. Here's an update from Greg:

Drivetrain

• Added a plastic spool to hold the string in place on the broom.
• The spool is held in place on the broom by bicycle grip tape.
• The string is wrapped around rubber bands on the spool and motor, for friction.
• It works!

Code

• We did some debugging and found that we were reading noisy signal between 0-300 (approx.) when the LED was off (into the analog input). When it was on, we were reading all 0's.
• We switched the polarity of the LED leads to the analog in so we could read a positive signal. Now we are reading the same when it is off (0-300 noisy) and about 410 when it is on.
• The threshold in the code is set at >= 405, which seems to be working.
• It seems to be too easy to concentrate at level 3, so we tried switching the leads, but I guess the voltage threshold would be different for LEDs 4 or 5... we don't know what those values are.
• We had some problems with the headset/base station, either getting stuck or losing signal, or just generally being wonky. Might need new batteries? Might need to try Akshay's?
  

Music elements

• We had some happy accidents with the way we arranged things... worked and looked great! We still need:
• Ways to affix/stand the pots on the table
• To fix the hanging objects to the dowels
• More objects hanging and on table, another dowel, possibly more table space?

And now, for the fun stuff, breaking news from Joel... videos of the prototype!

Ones that shows the kinetic glory in action :

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwiAbIq7w7E)

another that shows the EEG action:

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsY8rfbXpiY)

these are not the droids you are looking for...

Driving a Motor with Arduino

Last Thursday Jakob & I broke out the Arduino to see if we could drive a motor with it. The issue - we're running a high torque motor that draws around 40mA, and the Arduino can only handle 20mA. It's also a Duemilanove model, so the maximum power output is 5V--not enough for the motor if we wanted it to move with any speed, it was enough h0wever, to drive the gate of a MOSFET and separate the control board and motor circuit. Got some tips from my friend Matt, a mechtraonics TA, and borrowed a MOSFET and pull-down resistor to do the job. Initially used a 9V battery to drive the motor and turned it ON and OFF with a button switch (later to be replaced by the EEG input).

I used two digital pins, one as an output to drive the gate and another as an input from the button switch. Here is a photo of the setup, and it worked!
Only a few more things before we get mind control going...