Week 4-Sensors

You walk into a haunted hotel, you make a left down the hallway and then out of nowhere, a skeleton comes flying down and makes an attempt to scare you. Now how does that work? It works with the power of sensors. That seemed to be the topic on Thursday as well as a lab also.

Sensors are amazing because it’s allows a computer to function based on human activity. That skeleton didn’t just fall down because it was the right place at the right time. A sensor was triggered telling a computer that there is human activity in the area and trips off a timer and executes the effect. The sensors we played with in class on Thursday didn’t quite do that, but it did get our feet a little wet into how they worked.

What we did in class was hook up a sensor knob to an Arduino to see the outcome on a computer, when you turned the knob up, you saw all the byte number that the knob was on and went all the way to 1024. Turn the knob down, and you saw the numbers go back to zero. Of course a code was placed on the Arduino for this to work and with codes come guesses and tests. We were able to slow down the rate of the numbers as they popped up when the knobs were turned and we were also able to control a light with the knob also. A very successful and interesting lab I must say.

I would love to use sensors for my final project to just create something fun and educational. I would love to do that fart machine I explained in the last journal just to make things interesting but I above to answer the following questions:

1. How do I create this effect and where do I begin?
2. What parts and components will I need to create it?
3. How do I make it college level?