Physical Build

After a very long time of testing and revising the changes I had made between my small scale prototype and largw scale translation, I eventually noted that the foam I was using must have been slighlty conductive. I did not see that one coming. As I had the foam secured to the metal plates there was inteferance when I was applying pressure. Once the foam condensed enough I believe it was essentially acting as a form of resistance. This resistance messed with my readings from the 'completed circuit' to my serial output. So, I needed to revise my approach.

I decided that foam could still be used as a compression aid, but it would have to be separate to the metal plates - that was fine. I could just secure my rubber surface to a slighlty thicker piece of foam and it would functionally work the same.

I then needed some way to attach my metal to my rubber - glue was too weak and finicky so I concluded that drilling holes through the rubber and metal plates may be a more durable alternative. I would then threat rubber bands through these holes to fasten the two components together.

This time I was determined to test properly as I must have not been thorough enough in my previous build approach. So, I went through this drilling and threading proceduce (which wasn't particularly easy) for one pressure pad and tested. Success!! Then I tried again for the second to make sure it wasn't a fluke - success again!! I then made the rest of the pressure pads in rounds (measure all, cut all foam, drill all pilot holes, drill all main holes, drill all rubber, fasten all components).

So, that took a while but I was super happy with the result (see video)

Audio Feedback

Audio feedback is proving a lot more difficult than I previously anticipated. As colour is so subjective it is very difficult to map out what all colours should be with respect given to sound.

For example, something with a value (in my system) with relatively high R and G values and absolutely any B value can be considered orange. So, this is going to be a really fun game of trial and error.

I did, however, find a bug in my code when trying out audio feedback. It was a bug that was causing the reset to seemingly work but would then act up again after another one or two colour pad pushes. So that took a very long time to debug as I could not find what was going wrong for a very long time. Nevertheless, it has been fixed and Audio Feedback is back on my radar. I just need to do it in increments I think, otherwise I tend to get frustrated. So far I have done: Red, Yellow, Orange, Black and White audio feedback. A fair few to go though

Team Update

The team is going along quite well. Discord took a bit of getting use to. Jess and I did some debugging on her project on the server so we could get a bit more familiar with it. We have also decided that we will start the team report now so that we aren't all super stressed in the next few weeks. A fair way to go before exhibit though :)