Contact & Workshop

In this week, we participated in our allocated contact and workshop session. During Tuesday’s contact session, we first had a general Q&A session and then each individual done the ‘report-back’ session by giving a brief description of the concept, sharing their processes and achievements during the mid-break and concerns about moving forward the project. My responses were:

Quick description of the concept:

My idea is to have a belt (attached a 3 Axis compass magnetometer module) to detect users’ belly movement, then give them some acoustic feedback. There will also be a Microphone sensor to detect users’ exhalation, and users need to exhale out slowly, around 10 seconds, to ‘blow out’ the light (this exercise game is like asking users to blow out a ‘candle’). Therefore, users can exercise the steady deep breath which is required in exercising abdominal breathing technique.

1. What did you achieve over the break?

• First, read some online articles and literature around the breathing issues people have and how to use different sensors to help people do some respiratory exercises. <some of the articles and literature were shared by our teammates>

• Second, followed some tutorials online to make some simple projects to get a deeper understanding of the Arduino toolkits. These simple projects were ‘Temperature Alarm’, ‘Vibration Detector’, and an ‘Auto Light’.

• I bought some sensors that may useful for my project. My focus is going to be teaching those who are interested in singing the ‘Belly or Abdominal breathing technique’, so the sensors I bought are ‘3 Axis compass magnetometer module’ can be used to detect the belly movement, and ‘Microphone Sound Sensor Module’ and ‘Temperature and Humidity sensor module’ can be used to sense the breathing behaviour.

• Also, I completed the breakdown of the project by finishing the Miro board. By doing that, I get more ideas about how to move my project into next level.

2. What is your main task for the next week?

• For the remaining of this week, I’m going to conduct some online interviews to get more data from users

• Based on the research results from desk and primary research, finalising my concept

• Finding some useful resources that generate acoustic feedback on Arduino

3. What concerns do you have about completing it?

Some technical issue, like I’m not good at using different libraries and functions in Arduino, so that’s what I need to learn and seek help from tutors and my team members.

For Friday’s workshop:

1. What tech are you using?

I’m using the Arduino beginner toolkit as well as some sensors bought in the local store, like ‘3 Axis compass magnetometer module’, ‘Microphone Sound Sensor Module’ and ‘Temperature and Humidity sensor module’. As for functions, I will use the Tone and NoTone function in Arduino IDE to generate the acoustic feedback; and for detecting the breathing exercise, I will use some ‘if else’ loops to control the light effect based on users’ exhalation duration.

2. What do you need help on (Tech + Concept)?

At this moment, things need help are more about the coding part. Maybe around how to use the different functions and loops to achieve my desired results.

3. Have you made any progress on the physical build?

I have created some simple projects by following some tutorials to explore Arduino but I haven’t built the physical part of my project.

Team progress

During this week, our team had some online meetings by using the breakout room function in the allocated contact and workshop sessions. On Tuesday’s meeting, we shared with each other about physical materials and digital resources we can use to build our project. For example, Paula shared with me that I could use the running belt to attach the sensor, so that to create the belt part of my project. On Friday’s meeting, we talked about how to use the microphone as the sound detector to sense the breathing behaviour.

Individual process:

In this week, I conducted three interviews with my target users. By doing that, I got to know more about their goals and motivations.

In addition, I followed some tutorials online to explore different sensors by creating some small projects. First, I used 7 buttons and a buzzer to create a very tiny piano to explore the Tone and NoTone function, which can used to create the acoustic feedback of my project. I also used the ambient light sensor, a LED and a buzzer to explore how to use the light parameter to control audio output. Besides, I used the ultrasonic sensor and two LEDs to create a distance-controlled light, and also used the ultrasonic sensor, a LED and a buzzer to explore how to use distance parameter to control audio output. Finally, I used the microphone module and a LED to explore how to use the microphone input to trigger a light (the LED will light up 2 seconds after the microphone sensor detected any noise). By creating these small projects, I was able to get to know functions of different sensors and different combinations of them to create some interesting effects which may be useful for my project.

Improvement

1. Compressing the image file size for better display in journal post.
2. Adding the alt text description of each image