This documentation page is organized by components of the project. However, most of the progress was not completed section-by-section in that manner.
To follow the progression of the project chronologically, the general timeline is as follows:
Brainstorm: Project Planning
Starting off Simple: Heart Rate Part 1, Speaker Part 1, Thermistor Part 1 and 2, and LED
Making it More Complicated: Heart Rate Part 2, Speaker Part 2
Putting it Together: Physical Presentation, Combining the Code
Finished Product: Final Iteration
Maybe I could use a fulcrum and pulley system attached to a servomotor to move a ghost around the room. Or, I could do something with a servomotor blowing smoke into the room like a misty fog in a cemetery (that’s just a smoke machine..).
But all these ideas seem too simple, especially when I hear ideas like
Maybe servos + FSRs = robotic ouija board? LEDs and a speaker = ghost detector? Five potentiometers = combination lock candy puzzle? - Jeff Feddersen
I was inspired to revisit the drawing board.
Image: List of inputs and outputs I’ve used before in labs
I thought of Halloween concepts: Bloody Mary, haunted house, tarot reading, corn maze, crystal ball, ghost stories, fortune tellers..
And, I made a list of inputs and outputs that I am familiar with.
From this process, I came up with two potential projects that would be practically achievable with my skill level and time frame of 2 weeks.
Proposal 1: Bloody Mary
I saw that the Arduino Nano IoT33 has a built in motion detector. Reading into it, the motion detector works by reading the relative position of the microcontroller when moving the microcontroller.
Bloody Mary, from my recollection, is where you spin around three times in a dark bathroom while holding a candle and chanting Bloody Mary to summon a ghost of Bloody Mary in the mirror.
Inspired by the way the Arduino’s motion detector works, I thought of having people hold the breadboard and spin around three times as an input. The output would then be some recreation of Bloody Mary’s ghost, starting with red lights and screeches from LEDs and speakers. Perhaps a servo motor can reveal a ghost. However, I realized the wiring would be a hard limiting factor to our project, where people might get twisted with the power supply cord or yank it out. We could work with a battery, but then there would also be the issue of the servo motor wiring. To pull it off, I would likely need to use a separate microcontroller. I would also need to procure a mirror. Certainly there are ways to go around the concerns mentioned. However, as it stands, this proposal seems a bit more complicated than originally intended.
Proposal 2: Crystal Ball
For this proposal, I could use temperature as my input, where a person would rub a physical crystal ball. A servo motor can blow smoke inside the ball. My outputs would be LEDs that shine red or green and a speaker that reinforces yes or no with buzzer and dings.
This proposal accounted for most of the concerns I had in the previous proposal because the wiring would be contained to inside of the crystal ball.
When discussing this plan with Elodie, my partner for the assignment, we went over several logistical factors and fleshed out the details of the project proposal further.