Whimsy Wand
Group members: Preeti Mahajan, Merel Ververs-Spiegel, Milena Satrohan
Project Description
For this project, we decided to initially create a “Broke Student’s Drawing Tablet” consisting of a Processing Sketch that uses music within the public domain to change the stroke weight of a line depending on the frequency within the audio file while using a capacitive sensing interface that would use the Arduino BLE 33’s pressure sensor to register a stylus to allow users to draw. During our trouble-shooting we discovered that the scope of trying to build a capacitive sensor was a bit out of reach and instead shifted the interface to build around the IMU solely. As a result, the “Whimsy Wand” was created. This wand consists of just the BLE 33 and utilizes the built in Gyroscope to track the user’s movements as a drive input in order to draw on screen within processing. Although initially the design was based on a Wacom Tablet the current aesthetic was inspired by the crudely animated “Wand Drawings” as seen during Disney Channel transitions between commercials and shows. Due to the departure from our original idea, some setbacks in terms of shifting the code to work with the alternative sensors proved to cause many problems either in our understanding of how to translate the code or communication between Arduino and Processing or between the physical input and digital output. This assignment allowed us to explore more of the BLE 33’s capabilities while allowing us to explore a more fun and whimsical approach for future use and gamification.
Link to video: https://vimeo.com/646710675
Link to Arduino and Processing Code on Github
https://github.com/qwertyuiosdfghjk/Whimsy-Wand.git
References
Disney. “Disney Want Intro FAILS (BEFORE AND AFTER Editing)”, YouTube, Uploaded by Trevor Webb, 2017. https://youtu.be/mvQqwYq2cZE
Disney. “The Best Disney Channel Wand IDs! | Compilation | Disney Channel”, YouTube, Uploaded by Disney Channel, 2019. https://youtu.be/s10IPj_hS-4
Dan Shiffman. “1.1: Drawing with Pixels – Processing Tutorial”, YouTube, Uploaded by The Coding Train, 2015. https://youtu.be/a562vsSI2Po
Unknown. “Using the accelerometer and gyroscope on your Nano 33 BLE”, YouTube, Uploaded by Scott Fitzgerald, 2020. https://youtu.be/WJkn9ZmS9Gs
Unknown. “Arduino BLE Example Explained used Arduino Nano 33 BLE Sense| Arduino Bluetooth Tutorial”, YouTube, Uploaded by Arduino Porjects & Robotics Tutorials – RootSaid✅, 2019. https://youtu.be/ZwAcOJukpyI
Unknown. “Processing art STROKEWEIGHT | Grid Art Studies 03 (Creative coding art)”, YouTube, Uploaded by thedotisblack creative coding, 2019. https://youtu.be/MHFuSQK6GL8
Lukrembo. Biscuit, Audio, 2019.
Lukrembo. “(No copyright music) loft type beat “biscuit” | free vlog music | prod. By lukrembo”, YouTube, Uploaded by LuKremBo, 2019.
https://soundcloud.com/lukrembo/biscuit
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NzxocGLaUR4uX6VQlTb9QhvsqbcFx4uS/view