Week 4.

Intro

The continuation of the two-week project left us with many questions about programming the arduino. We collaborated with the tutors to help us understand the code that would allow our device to run smoothly. We developed the final concept to be a device that helps marathon runners train individually, in a group and with anyone around the world. The context would be marathon situations and the device would be worn on the runners wrist. We chose to put the device on the runners wrist because the runners arm movements match the runners leg movements, so the faster the legs move the faster the arms move. The input has different levels of acceleration and the output is a sound and light feedback to tell the runner to speed up or slow down.

Workshop

The group decided not to divided the project into four tasks, instead we all worked on all parts together. This method worked well for our group as we all had similar ideas an could work individually with in the group. Each member had a more developed skill than the other and we used this to our greatest advantage. 

We aim to use an accelerometer to measure movement on the X axis. When the accelerometer is still the X axis reads around 510. When the accelerometer is moved slowly it reads up to 530. From 510 to 599 the device will make no sound or flash a light. When the accelerometer reads 600 or over the RGB shines red and the speaker makes a sudden low note and the light stays red for 5 seconds even if the accelerometer reads under or over 600. 

When the accelerometer reads 700 or over the RGB changes to Blue and makes a middle note tone and the light stays on for 5 seconds even if the accelerometer reads under or over 700. When the accelerometer reads 800 or over the RGB changes to green and the speaker makes a high pitch tone and the light stays on for 5 seconds even if the accelerometer reads under or over 800.

Once we collaborated with the tutor we were then able to experiment with the arduino codes to make them more representative of our final design. We developed the outputs into three stages. Slow, just right and too fast. The first stage has a red light and a low tone. The second stage is a green light and a medium tone and the third stage is red light and a low tone. 

We still had trouble getting the middle stage with the arduino as the readings were very close together. For demonstration purposes we also added a switch witch turned the sound on and off so it would not annoy the runner.We conducted further experiments and got the lights to change to the right colours and the sound to match the colours. With further experimentation it would be possible to get the arduino to react exactly to our desired design solution.