I started playing with a capacitive controller the other day. It works on the principles of capacitance (like the iPhone, just not a s cool) obviously. Basically it is three pieces of cardboard with some aluminum foil taped to it. Those pieces of aluminum are connected to my little arduino board through a couple resistors. For each "plate" I set up a basic RC circuit with an extra resistor to protect the arduino from any surges that may occur. The plates are arranged in a sort of half cube position. When I put my hand in the middle of them each plate uses my hand as its second plate. The arduino board calculates the amount of time it takes for each plate to reach a HIGH signal. I can then use that data to determine that distance that my hand is from each plate. Right now I am using the controller with a simple tone generating program I wrote in processing. So far it seems to be working fairly well. I can control the pitch, phase, and volume of a simple sine wave just by moving my hand around. There are a lot of applications for technology like this (as can be seen with the iPhone). I think something like this could be used along with a multitouch system to achieve some cool effects. One of my next projects is a multitouch table so maybe I can include some of this stuff. After that I just need to add a wiimote and then I will be golden ;)
Along with all this technical stuff I have found time to do some sculpting. I am almost finished with my first sculpture ever (aside from playdo when I was 5) so I will try to post some pictures.
Until then...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment