By: Nahanaeli Schelling, Peter Esveld, Caroline Brown

Petje is a pair of interactive animals. The paired Petjes communicate with each other via vibrations and light. Petting one Petje will trigger vibrations in the other. The movement and material (fur, fabric, and synthetic skin) combine to create an impression of life. This lifelike quality creates a feeling of presence which can be conveyed to each user.

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Finally got the accelerometer working. Phew.

Accelerometer Controls White Ball. Exciting! from Peter Esveld on Vimeo.

We finally got it working, after we realized the switch needed a separate power + ground. :-/

H-Bridges are coooooool.

First attempt at a 3D, interactive music visualizer. Kinda wonky but whatev.

here’s the link

The game just changed. Half the world doesn’t own a computer. But they all have cell phones. And Google will more than likely be providing the software. Now if only we didn’t have to deal with telecom companies…

Free, open-source smartphone software.

The top one is the sending part of the pair, the bottom is the receiving/reacting part.

Here’s the sensor setup – used a sensor setup with the same circuit plan as last week.

The Arduino is reading the serial input, but as garbage values. So we go into Processing. Here’s the video:

Arduino Serial Communication 1 from Peter Esveld on Vimeo.

Instead of a potentiometer, I used a stretch sensor just to keep things interesting. It wasn’t really that difficult, besides reading the slightly odd values returned by the sensors. Tom Igoe’s code worked handily after adding a few println commands to compare values between the sensor and mapping function.

Here’s the loop statement snippet I modified for a 4″ sensor. (the values will still be wrong since I broke the sensor and had to fix it):

void loop() {
 analogValue = analogRead(analogPin);      // read the analog input
 pulse = map(analogValue,45,30,minPulse,maxPulse);    // convert the analog value
 Serial.println(analogValue);
 Serial.println(pulse);    // to a range between minPulse
 // and maxPulse.
 // pulse the servo again if rhe refresh time (20 ms) have passed:
 if (millis() - lastPulse >= refreshTime) {
   digitalWrite(servoPin, HIGH);   // Turn the motor on
   delayMicroseconds(pulse);       // Length of the pulse sets the motor position
   digitalWrite(servoPin, LOW);    // Turn the motor off
   lastPulse = millis();           // save the time of the last pulse
 }
}