Thursday, August 13, 2009

Card Project

This was a group effort. I joined Nathan and Roy. We each had a card: Urban Surprise; Go Long; and Funny, Cry, Happy. We decided on a project that was sort-of a mix of all the cards together.

We pondered for a while what to work on, and Roy had heard earlier about the kite I wanted to do for my final project, and suggested that we do some twist on this for our card project. So we went with that. We decided to use the signal strength as a way to measure how close two kites were together, and then use this measure to light LEDs up on the kite.

Roy offered to work on the code, and Nathan and I would work more on the hardware and such. I went away to get us kites (which was actually slightly harder than I had expected), and we agreed to meet the next day. When we got back together we spent way to much time on the "weight" of the kite. Our thinking was that 9v batteries were going to be just too heavy. So, we spent quite a bit of time stripping 50+ ft of wires apart and trying to twist them into string. We then spent some time trying to decide how to quickly get the components "solid" enough to stay put in the air. Nathan thought that he would be able to heat shrink the wires.

As the evening got late, we realized we had no time, and just would cobble something together. I even bought balloons the day of our presentation. Our thinking was that the balloons would help bare the weight and get our kites in the air. But then Roy's code didn't come together. So...fun to try and get working...but not a working prototype in the end.

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