Final Project Assessment

Final Project Assessment

When I browsed YouTube for different LED projects I came across the LED Matrix and I knew it was something I had to try. Here are some of the videos that inspired me to do this, and here are two tutorials I found that had different ways of creating an LED Matrix display:

LED Matrix Displays:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QGt-y2Ivn4 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxeWjvoCf94

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDgYBiDw1AI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA3AUjyZgps 

Tutorials:

http://www.jbprojects.net/projects/led/

http://www.instructables.com/id/LED-Dot-Matrix-Display/

http://www.bryanchung.net/?p=177

Essentially, LED’s are a bunch of little diodes that emit light when they comes across an electric current, a matrix is grid based array of these small LED’s that can be programmed using an Arduino board to create different lighting effects. You can literally do ANYTHING with an Arduino board, if you know its in and outs, in particularly, its programming language and the right cables/wires. The Arduino board, is a physical computing platform that’s based on an input/output (IO) interface that enables the user to process or program the Arduino to the computer or any other stand alone object. To be honest, until my professor gave me the Arduino board to work with, I had no cue what it was let alone use it. So I went to its website to learn a bit more and was still utterly confused but definitely more knowledgeable about what it was. I realized that the Arduino is heavily based on coding and programming and that you NEED to be pretty savvy with the language to get it up and running.

 When I first set up my LED Matrix on the breadboard my professor let me borrow, I set up the circuit according to this video I found on YouTube, it seemed the most doable at the time since I was limited on resource due to timing and deadlines, so I tried to find a schematic I could manage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBLKXD-xxMs&feature=channel_page

I actually successfully lit up my LED matrix that I bought of SparkFun.com, not entirely but I was able to for a brief time. Then a week or two later it no longer wanted to light up, and I knew it had to be the power. I didn’t have the correct cables to drive the LED Matrix ,so I did more research on YouTube and on SparkFun and discovered that SparkFun had a projects page. One of its members had a feature on LED Displays:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEKEM6ZOsZE

http://www.flickr.com/photos/32572109@N02/sets/72157609436979020/

While I was surfing YouTube, I actually sent messages to a lot of the members who I saw had videos of successful LED Matrixes and asked questions of how they went about setting it up with the Arduino. Two of them, actually answered back and they gave me good responses, but the one that was most relevant was this:

Hey,      I would get the backpack, it makes it a lot easier! Connecting it after that is actually pretty simple… (I’m no electronics expert) You only need 4 wires from the arduino to the backpack as it uses something called SPI which is a serial protocol. You need to connect: arduino data out -> backpack data in (called MOSI or master out slave in) arduino data in -> backpack data out (MISO) (might actually not need this)  arduino enable -> backpack enable arduino clock -> backpack clock Then just connect power to both the arduino and backpack. After that it is just a matter of uploading code that makes the arduino talk SPI… You can find a nice basic test routine for the matrix here… http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Code/RGBBackpack Read the comments in the code to see which arduino pins they use or connections. If all goes well you should have 8 stripes of colour on the display. After that just tinker with the code to add more functionality. Search for the RGB LED Matrix threads on sparkfun’s messageboards for more info if you need it. Cheers Nick

 

Apparently, there was an LED Matrix on SparkFun that came with a Battery Pack that already powers the LED Matrix so all that was left was to connect it with four specific wires that I wasn’t too clear how they looked like or how to get my hands on them. I wouldn’t mind buying the LED Matrix with the Battery Pack, so long as I knew I could get those wires, because then all I would have to do is set it up and program it. However, I looked online everywhere, and couldn’t find those specific wires so I ended up letting that method go.

I attempted once again to light up my LED Matrix, and it failed again, I officially lacked the right wires to power the matrix up. My professor suggested I should try working with the breadboard more and working on just a few LED’s and not the entire matrix. I followed his advice and went on YouTube, I watched a bunch of videos talking about breadboards and this is what I gathered:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiqNaSPTI7w

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq9XMNsoAd8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HteDBfSJ9zo&feature=related

A breadboard/proto-board is essentially a solderless device that allows you to create an experimental circuits and not have to fuse any of the components together. The breadboard is broken down into two main areas the terminal strips which are the main areas that are divided by a strip or notch, and the bus strips that run parallel on opposite sides which serve power to the electrical components. Both LED’s and bus/terminal strips can be powered through negative and positive currents or charges. Underneath the breadboard are rows of metal/copper strips that connect the slots you see on the top part of the board. If I were to place two different wires in different slots within the same row, they would be electrically connected because they share the same power from the copper strip underneath. However, if the wires were placed on different rows they would no longer be electrically connected by the same strip of copper. The letters of the alphabet, the X and Y’s on the terminal strips, as well as numbers on the breadboard, are often used to make it easier for the user to figure the placement of the components. The right and left side of terminal strips are not connected, in order to connect them, you will need to place an IC on the break in between both sides of the terminal. This was all I pretty much needed to know to start setting up LED’s on the breadboard.

http://flickr.com/photos/jmillerid/414817073/sizes/l/

I literally based my schematic on this photograph, which demonstrates and LED being turned on and off by a censor. I used two copper wires that I connected at either ends of the bus strips, one powered positively and the other negatively so I can power the LED’s. I then placed several 220 Ohm Resistors (1/4 Watts) ranging from the negatively powered bus strip, all the way to the terminal strips closest to the positively powered bus strip. Next, I took several LED’s and lined them up accordingly to the same strip where the resistors left off, creating a strip of LED’s along the breadboard; positive side of the LED on the terminal strip and negative on the bus strip. Lastly, I connected the two copper wires to the Arduino board; the wire on the negative bus strip was placed within the 5V power slot of the Arduino, and the wire on the positive bus strip was placed on the Gnd power slot of the Arduino.

This was actually a lot harder than I realized to figure out, but the image I found really helped me to understand how to use the resistors to take power form one bus strip to the terminal strips. Before I lit up a bunch of LED of course, I practiced with just one. It took a while to set up because I kept blowing up the LED’s (I forgot I needed transistors to regulate the 5V power and the resistors). After I got the LED to light up, I attached a wire to the GND slot of the Arduino board, which sort of cancelled out the power of either the 5V slot or the Gnd slot of the Arduino, because it made the LED shut off, so I could manually make it blink:

 

I also dragged an LED along the rows of lit up LED’s on the breadboard to see if it would light up; when I moved the positive end of the LED closer the LED’s on the board, it lit up, when I did the same thing with the negative end, nothing happened:

At this point I was still unable to program the Arduino, I actually found a lot of different codes for LED’s that I wanted to try to re-write and use to program the Arduino:

http://makingthingsinteractive.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/arduino-1.pdf 

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/tutorial_info.php?tutorials_id=44

 However, if I couldn’t even the examples of the Arduino Software to work and program on the LED, then how could I expect any other piece of code to work as well. After struggling for who knows how long, I went to my professor and explained my situation and he helped me program the Arduino. Apparently I need to press the power button and then upload the code to the Arduino. Now that that was established I was glad but I failed on the most significant part of this project; making the program apply to the LED’s on the breadboard. I need certain wires or cable that I can connect to the digital slots of the Arduino board and the breadboard so that I can control the LED’s as well. Without that vital connection the project is sort of left unfinished. If I could figure out the specific wire I need I would like to continue this project and learn more of how to work with the Arduino. I’d like to at least be able to do something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyKgM5GTwZQ

Halloween Video

This is the Halloween Assignment I worked on, I would have to say this is the most out-there I’ve been with any of the assignments and I took a lot of chances with this video, including looking a bit crazy. >_< The whole idea is about this girl who think of people as her toys so she captures them and if they try to run away from her she murders them. Since she’s deranged and troubled in every possible sense she knows she’s killed them but hasn’t exactly grasped the fact that they’re dead. Jessica was the former toy, the young man you see in the video is the new one. The creepy song I sing was actually from a cartoon show. I used Floam, Atomic Fireball candies along with fake blood to look like brains or eye-balls.

Animation Project

I choose to do Stop-Motion Animation because I figured it would a lot of fun and it was. Animation is extremely tedious work but it’s fun to see it all 300 and plus images put together and create a cool animation. Since I do work at the Time Arts Lab I figured I might as well make it beneficial to me, I choose to animate the chairs and the papers and pens I saw on the desk. the three Oblique strategies also helped me formulate my ideas. I also wanted to incorporate sort of an ironic pun, since the chairs, papers and pens are moving on their own their sort of like ghosts yet they’re trying to locate a missing person. Yet, how can they do so if they’re non-existent as well. I tried to have that be the idea. 
 

3 Oblique Strategies:

1) Where is the edge? I just interpreted it as always having an element cropped off or having the table, the main focus of the video, serve as the edge throughout the video, it’s basically in every frame.

2) A line has two sides. I sorta figured that a what it meant was that a line had a double meaning sort of like on a map, it’s just a line on a paper but it points to a direction, so it serves a purpose. Thats why I decided to integrate a map and have it mean something in the animation.

3) Simple subtraction. Turn off the lights.

Narrative Assignment

This is my Narrative Assignment, I based it off the experience I had when my apartment went on fire during the summer of my 8th grade. It was one of the most scariest moments of my life, I had everything going for me; I had won a lot of Academic Achievement awards as well as Art Awards and it was the week of my 8th grade prom and a week or two away from my graduation. My family and I had lost everything in that fire but we were thankful we’re alive and we were able to get past it. The video itself has a lot of associative footage, like the orange and red flowers, and dissociative footage like the flowing water and faucets. I tried to get the audio as clear as possible but it was difficult to get some hissing sounds that come after the “s” and “t” without cutting out the letters of the sounds completely. I think I did a good job with the footage, I think it complements my story pretty well.

 

Here is the actual Narrative (RE-ARRANGED VERSION)

I can only imagine what my bother must have seen when he step foot into the living room. (pause) Literarily (bluntly), I was dead asleep. He must’ve ran to my parents and told them what was going on, I heard some commotion but was too tired to get up and see what it was, I do remember seeing a bright light though.. (normal) a very bright orange light (slowly), perhaps I was dreaming (pause)… or so I told myself. (normal) Next thing I new I was shook awake by my father, he was yelling at me to get up, I still didn’t understand what was going on. I kept trying to rub my eyes open, but my father didn’t allow for it as he dragged me out of the room. (normal) 

I was no later than nine o’ clock when I decided to go to bed that evening, my mother had been yelling at me to stop chatting online and go to sleep. It couldn’t have been less than two hours later when my brother sensed something was wrong. (normal) He could smell the smoke invade his room (pause), I was asleep at that time, (slowly) sound asleep. Everyone looked scared, including my family; my mother (pause) enraged, my father (pause) furious, and my brother (pause), thankful we’re all still alive. I only witnessed its destructed for a split second, I was outside along with all the residents of my apartment building in the windy summer night standing, before I could even absorb what I had seen. (normal)

Did I mention we lived next door to the Fire Station? (pause) It took them over a half hour to open their doors. Before my family and I had even left our apartment, there were others knocking and screaming for help. They never answered. The fire station from ten blocks away arrived before they even loaded they’re truck. (normal)

As we waited another half hour for the firemen to load the water into the fire house and drag it into the building, we watched as our living room windows exploded and shards of glass where everywhere, the fumes form inside the apartment came pouring out like a water out of a faucet (pause), we stood there (pause) powerless (pause) as everything we ever owned reverted back to dust. (slowly)

I should’ve known better than to trust people for their job title. (normal) I had always thought that if anything went wrong, I’d never have to worry, I could just call the firemen next door. (pause) They would save the day before the damage would be done. (exaggerate) It’s funny (pause), you never think it’s happen to you. (normal)

I’ve never stood so close to fire before, maybe because I’ve always been too scared to, but that night, I was (normal), face to face (pause), neck to neck (pause), foot to foot (pause) in front of it. It quickly engulfed the thin material making it’s soft beige color turn into a dark charcoal stain on the floor. (normal) Just goes to show you can never be certain. It was only the beginning of summer back in the eighth grade. (pause)

I lived on the first floor, first apartment (pause) 

Introduction Video

This is my first Time Arts Assignment, an introductory video where I’m not to reveal my face or name in it completion. I figured that since my visual footage is pretty straight forward to the things I like and describe me best that no audio was really needed. I really just wanted people to watch it. I tried to cover my face with things like my hair or an object I’d happen to be holding. This is my first time ever editing or using a camera other than taking pictures so this was a lot of fun.

Overload Assignment RE-DO

This is the nee Overload Assignment video I made. I think this one is more spontaneous and give more of an ‘overload’ sensation in comparison to my other video. I played a lot more with the audio; I broke loops of songs and integrated sounds to make them more drastic changes ice and I also played with the effects in audacity. With the video I couldn’t do much changes since I used iMovie8, but I made the clips shorter to that they change faster and give it an uneasy shift from clip to clip along with repetition.

Overload Assignment

This is my Overload Assignment video, I wanted to have a suspenseful vibe or mood in my video so that’s why I played a lot with color and the audio wasn’t was active as it probably should have been. I don’t think I met the assignments requirements because my video doesn’t exactly read ‘overload’, it’s more narrative-like and timed, than effects and spontaneous changes. I like my video but I think I’m going to re-do this.

Hello

In a nutshell:

Cartooning

Animation

Illustration

Film

Tennis

Ink =

Me.