This week has been focusing on the physical interaction of my prototype. My team decided to divide the prototype into different parts and I was distributed the part where the user throws the ball into the air to send the audio recording previously made and stored within the ball. As mentioned in a previous post, I was also distributed with making the server and client that would make communication between the balls possible, but this was a separate part of my tasks.

The part in the process that I was building comes right after the ball has been shaken and the user has chosen a colour. When the user is satisfied with both the message and the colour to represent it, the user throws the balls upwards and catches it, which tells the code to send the message to the connected user on the other end.

My team and I purchased some components ourselves which was delivered to us last week, among the components we ordered was an accelerometer which was bought especially for my part of the prototype. The first challenge that I came across was the fact that I needed to solder the accelerometer to the pin thing(the one that you need to fasten it to the breadboard) as it wasn't able to get enough contact without and therefore didn't work. After talking to the tutors they were able to provide me with one that was already soldered so I met up with a tutor and got a different one.

Second challenge was the sensitivity of the accelerometer on its own. I used a tutorial which showed me the raw data the chip made but as it turned out it even registered gravity and the reading that was displayed varied constantly even when not touched. Aften finding a tutorial that showed me a library that made more sens of the reading I could code it to react when exceeding a specific number (when I threw the ball up). As I'm inexperienced in this tech I might have understood it or explained it a bit wrong, but as far as I gathered that was the initial problem I experienced.

Since I'm basically done with my part of the concept I'm looking at other ways of interaction and how to make the experience more complex. It is also something that I will discuss with my team in the nearby future.