Group Meeting Update

Friday: At this meeting, we met to decide what work would be done over the weekend. Since we had to do some research in order for class next week, Daniel and Firaz decided to meet over the weekend to work with some of the technologies we discussed in class to help further our discussion for the next meeting. Yiran first notified us of the change in the structure of the overall design. Instead of having the smooth arch, a more angular arch will be used. Since the design is not finalized yet, it would be more difficult for the LCC students to know what the interaction is with the structure.


Monday: Before this meeting, Daniel and Firaz played with different sensors and lights with the arduino board, experimenting with that different technologies are capable of. In-O caught the LCC students further on the design of the structure and what parts of it had changed. The LCC students caught the ID students up on the technological decisions the class and groups have made.

Currently, the structure does not give much room for interaction. If the structure is too high, it cannot be used as a slide. Children cannot get onto the structure easily and also it would be easy to fall off and get injured. The structure really only allows for movement under the arch.

Daniel and Firaz found out that the IR Rangefinder work well in sunlight. The sun's rays did not affect the sensor in the way we discussed might happen in class. However, the testing did occur in the afternoon, on a relatively cool day and Atlanta can get extremely sunny and hot. Since these sensors will be under the slide, there is a lesser chance of interference from natural sources like sunlight, rain and snow. However, any sensors placed on top of the slides will have to consider these factors and be programmed to ignore their effects.

The speakers are each ~100mA. With the use of two speakers and two arduino boards, the total becomes 250mA. The circuit has two amplifiers also so the total goes up to 275mA.

After discussing with the TA's we learnt that powerful LED's consume 200-400mA of power. Any kind of interaction with lights will require many such powerful LED's which will in turn require a really powerful battery to power the entire circuit. As this would increase the cost of the units beyond the budget, it was decided to leave out the LED's from the design.