This switch is activated but a push. Pushing is a motion that can be performed by many parts of the body, I have tested elbow, toe and nose push on this switch. The structure of the switch is a simple barrier of cardboard that guides the power source. Upon connection with the wires, the circuit is closed and the LED lights up.
Integration: I couldn’t integrate this switch with the Huzzah microcontroller, because this battery’s voltage is too high for Huzzah and it could fry it.
Eric, Julian, and I came up with a different kind of love-machine. We attached a magnetic contact switch onto two halves of a giant fortune cookie. The idea is that the person has to “crack” open the cookie (this turns the switch off) which then prints in the serial monitor the predicted time (in minutes) until he/she meets his/her soulmate.
We came up with the metaphor thinking that it would be a simple and straightforward yet delightful experience.
Before experimenting with the physical interface (the cookie), we set up the circuits following this tutorial that walks through how to monitor the opening of a typically closed door. It didn’t work the first couple of times as we found that:
The Arduino UNO (used in the guide) produced 5V instead of the ESP8266’s 3.3V… meaning, we had to substitute the recommended 10kΩ resistor with a 220Ω one.
We had to rely on our instincts to make sense of the guide (pin numbers and all) in terms of our microcontroller model.
We attempted using a while loop and a higher-level if statement to stop the loop from running once the cookie’s been cracked open so that it only gives one prediction per person. Both didn’t work so, for now, we increased the delay after the loop so that Arduino doesn’t keep spitting out random predictions.
We designed the switch so that it at least looked like a fortune cookie. Its physical appearance would serve as the cue to its operation. The line printed in the serial monitor that reads: ‘Open the fortune cookie’ and the fortune cookie-looking fortune cookie were signifiers. The size of the cookie allowed for deep holes on each side on which the user could grasp onto. The cookie’s holes afforded gripping and pulling apart. We also stuffed the pocket with tissue and enclosed in some egg carton cells under each half to keep the user’s thumb from going too deep into the cookie which makes it harder to pull apart. By doing this, we designed constraints to limit mistakes that our users could commit.
To keep the two halves ‘stuck’ like a complete fortune cookie, we glued velcro patches where they should be connected in its pre-cracked state.
This link connects to the video for my switch, please leave any comments on my creation, and I will keep updating the switch to make it more interesting and appealling.
In belated accordance with our recent homework assignment, I connected my forward lumbar stretch switch to the Feather microcontroller and used a standard blinking function to direct the LED. The suspended quarter could be lowered down and onto two exposed wires that then created a connection between the microcontroller’s output and the LED.
It mostly worked! I repeatedly ran into a problem though: the LED was always quite dim when it blinked on. All the wires were extremely flush the first time I arranged the breadboard, so my first theory was that I hadn’t cut long enough wires and that the exposed ends hadn’t then been pushed all the way in. So I recut the wires, arranged them all, and nothing changed.
I then went into Arduino and realized I was directing the microcontroller toward the wrong pin, so I changed the LED integer to 16 rather than 2. That got the LED blinking at a brighter intensity, but it still wasn’t bright bright, and I’m not sure why. Nevertheless, the quarter switch worked, and I feel younger and more flexible than ever before.
Regarding potential improvements, it’s a little grotesquely DIY, particularly the exposed wires that are effectively taped to the side of the orange. I’d also like to figure out what happened with the dim LED light.
The original idea comes from using the body weight to turn on the switch and make it as a game for friends and families. Then I realized I can’t make it that large, so I made a smaller version of the seesaw switch.
So it is basically a seesaw in the middle. When one side of it reaches the ground, it will complete the circuit and turn on the light.
For the next step with our hands free switches we have been tasked with connecting them to our Feather HUZZAH micro controllers and getting them to function appropriately as a switch.
I had three options with my foot switch because it had two independent switches built into one interface. I could either do a switch in series which would mean one would need to bride both connections to get an LED to turn on, I could do a switch in parallel which would allow both switches to trigger the same LED but connecting both would do nothing extra, or I could just use them as two separate switches. I opted for the last option because it is easier for debugging and makes for a more fun demo.
Materials:
breadboard
LED x 2
wires
solder
Feather HUZZAH ESP8266
220 ohm resistors x 2
10k ohm resistors x 2
tinfoil
cardboard
Process:
Because I already had the switch built all I really needed to do was complete the circuit. One problem was the wires I originally had coming from the foot switch were too short to reach one breadboard. To fix this I soldered extensions onto the original wires for a longer reach. I then plugged one side of the wires into power and the two wires from the other side into pins 4 and 5. I also made sure to connect these pins to ground via 10K ohm resistors in order to prevent floating values. All that was left was connect two LEDs to two other pins and then to ground with a resistor.
The only real problem I was having was getting the wires to connect with the bottom of the shoe. I believe when the shoe was going down it would push down on the plastic male-connector component of the wire making it hard to get a good connection between the wires and the piece of foil on the bottom of the shoe. To fix this I just wrapped the ends of these wires with tinfoil making sure that there would be a good connection. It then worked well.
Code:
The code was relatively straight forward for this. I just checked to see if one of the switches was reading HIGH, and if it was I turned on the corresponding LED, if it wasn’t I turned it off.
int ledG = 13;
int ledR = 14;
int footFront = 4;
int footBack = 5;
void setup() {
// put your setup code here, to run once:
pinMode(ledG, OUTPUT);
pinMode(ledR, OUTPUT);
pinMode(footFront, OUTPUT);
pinMode(footBack, OUTPUT);
}
void loop() {
// put your main code here, to run repeatedly:
if(digitalRead(footFront) == HIGH){ digitalWrite(ledG, HIGH);
}else{ digitalWrite(ledG, LOW);}
So I made some mistakes and decided to remake my hands free switch once again. I decided to make a foot pedal type of switch where the bottom of the foot pedal would have something conducive in order to make the circuit a closed circuit. And when the foot pedal was not being pressed, the circuit would be open which would inherently mean the switch would be off. I taped a metal fork to the backside of a good plastic insulator.
I based my switch on a guitar pedal. In order to close the circuit, you step on it, as with a guitar pedal. The inside of my switch has two pieces of aluminum foil separated by a thin piece of cardboard. When you step on the pedal, the two pieces of aluminum touch. Two wires from the circuit are connected to these foil pieces, and this completes the circuit. I also installed a push button.
As soon as I heard “hands-free”, for some reason my mind immediately went to nose. Perhaps it felt the most natural; the nose is kind of like a face thumb. Here is my switch in action:
Bubbles are always my childhood dream. I try to make a switch with bubbles, which are two circles holding the bubbles and then people can blow some bubble to connect them. The water mixed with dish soap, hand soap in the bathroom and salt to increase conductibility is extremely conducive to connect the circuits.
I made one version prototype which is not suitable to solider. So the second version I use the paper clip to be the bubble-holding material. It works like an adjustable resistor when the bubble is fading! Though it seems fun, its a messy switch which will cause chaos after trigger it lots of time in front of the desk.
