Category Archives: Intro to Physical Computing

P Comp Midterm – Media Controller

The inspiration for this project was described by Phil; and the endgame was described by Alex. I’m finally getting around to describing the middle… In short, we wanted to build a display that would mimic the parallax effect of looking … Continue reading

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P Comp – Week 5 – Stupid Pet Trick

ITP has a tradition, which goes back I don’t know how far, that early on in the Intro to Physical Computing class each student builds his first production assignment, called the Stupid Pet Trick. I guess the name comes from … Continue reading

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P Comp – Week 4 – Analog Output

For some reason I always want to write “Analogue” rather than “Analog.” Is that wrong? Maybe I’m thinking of it in relation to the word Analogy. I keep having to check my code to make sure I spelled it right…. … Continue reading

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P Comp – Week 3 – Understanding Electricity

I am waaayyyyy late posting this, because I was doing some much more interesting stuff for this class (see week 5!). But I present the following photos as evidence that I did indeed learn to use a multimeter. See that? … Continue reading

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PComp – Week 2 – Fantasy Device

With the exciting news in the world of physics, Sparkfun was very quick to engineer some new components to take advantage of the inverse causality caused by faster-than-light neutrinos.

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PComp – Week 2 – Analog Input with Variable Resistors

Just the labs this week… I wanted to do a few extra things but couldn’t find the time. A variable resistor used to dim an LED: Two force-sensitive resistors each dim their own LEDs:

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PComp – Week 2 – Sensor Walk

Prepare to not be blown away. I unwisely chose an ordinary day when I had a lot of school work to do as my Sensor Walk day, so I ended up with a very unsurprising collection of sensors. I do … Continue reading

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Phys Comp Week 1 – Blinky, Blinky Lights

Fun fun fun! Pressing a switch to make one LED go on and the other go off: Pressing a switch to make a thrilling cascade of colored light: A random number generator – pressing the button causes one of the … Continue reading

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Physical Interaction at MOMA’s ‘Talk To Me’

Chris Crawford defines interaction using a conversational paradigm – two parties (at least) are involved, each party takes it in turns to listen, think and speak. The process is iterative – conversations (or more broadly, experiences) are built through the … Continue reading

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Interactive Ball Pit

I don’t recall getting to play in a ball pit until I was seventeen years old. In high school I played a lot of jazz piano, and our band was pretty good. Our high school program had gotten kind of … Continue reading

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