Team memebers: Daniel Castro, Kirsten Wong, Chenhao (Bill) Zhang , Sophie Price.
The Doll House
“The Doll House” was an academic group project in which we had to create an interactive embedded system using sensors and servomotors. The project has different interactions such as detecting touch with a touch sensor, changes in temperature and light, and actions when someone presses a button. During this project, I was the lead programmer and circuit developer.
Interactions
Touch Sensor
The touch sensor functions with the servomotor. I coded the sensor to make the servomotor move the door at 45 degrees when the sensor is being touched. The door will remain open until the user releases the touch sensor, then the servomotor will move to the original position.
Light Sensor
The light sensor controls the background of the project, if the the value detected by the sensor reaches a certain value the background changes from a day background to a night background. I used serial communication between Arduino and processing the values are passed to Processing to then check with the threshold value. Also inside the house, three LEDs turn on and off depending if the sensor is detecting light or not.
Temperature Sensor
The temperature sensor also controls the background changing between three different seasons which are summer, spring, and winter. I first store the temperature value in a variable, map it, and send it to Processing. In Processing I used if statements and boolean functions to decide which background to display depending on the temperature and light sensor.
There are three buttons that the user can press, and each one of them triggers an animation. I coded first to detect the state of the button in Arduino and send it to Processing. In Processing check if the button is pressed and play the corresponding animation.
The circuit
The circuit includes the Arduino, touch sensor, light sensor, temperature sensor, breadboard, and three buttons. I connected every element making sure they were working properly.