This week was further spent working on the Fade Candy Code, the starting the photoresistor code as well as the design of the laser cutting. The idea behind using laser cut wood was to have a type of barrier to hold the pipes in place , when they are placed through the "atoms." Each laser cut collar was designed to be in the shape of a circle. The circle would have a hole in the middle and its diameter should be just to for each pipe to easily slide through. The pipes were 1.5 inches in diameter, therefore the plan was to make the collars at 1.7 inches in diameter. Professor Joel was responsible for helping us get these collars laser cut in the sculpture lab. We went through great difficulty because the laser cutting machine was not cutting the wood in the correct positions that it was placed in the "Rhino" software. Additionally, there were also the problems of it not cutting the correct dimensions for some reason. We spent a few hours trying to solve the problem, but it was futile. Professor Joel did manage to get a few of the collars printed, some of them were too small, while some of them were just right. The plan was to try again next week, once the laser printer starts working properly again. We need over 100 collars in order to cover all 15 atoms, since two collars screwed together would be "sandwiched" together to hold each pipe in place.
The next challenge was the photoresistors and the problem Andy was facing with them were the amount of different types of cases to keep in mind as well as creating a Max code that would receive messages sent by the Arduino. The phoresistor is responsible detecting both light and darkness. Each case would have to take into consideration the amount light and darkness that would be in the ACW 103 room and set the numbers accordindly for the two detection modes. I(Divya), worked with Andy in creating the logic on how the photoresistors should work. The explanation is shown below. The next week would be spent on continuing to work on the Fade Candy and the photoresistors.
