Last week’s class was a productive user studies class.
When I decided to make a pair of heated gloves, I thought this is something practical and manageable…. like many things in life, it doesn’t always go as planned.
As suggested by Arlene earlier on in class, I decided to add on some LEDs to increase interaction between device and user. Because there’s limited work space on a gloves, tiny device such as Neopixels will be the only option, and they need to be soldered on.
Soldering is no mission impossible, but working on neopixel mini, something that has size like this–
and to solder three different wires on them in 6 different precise positions …. it’s a bit of challenging task to eyes, neck and my skill.
Another thing I learned from the soldering process is….. always prepare backup, extra backup. Because I only order pack of 4, thinking that I only need 3 of them, until I destroyed one of them, lost another one of them, give another one away to a resident who has been very helpful with my project… I found myself in short position. Plus, soldering micro parts is really tricky, so this is good training for me.
The heating pad and LEDs are basiccaly working based on the codes I using.
I spent lots of time running different versions of code while trying to transfer some part unto the gloves… and this happened.
The green LED on Arduino was off on when this error message displayed. And the only device I have connected to Mac is Arduino only. It did not happen last week, it did not happen Monday and Tuesday. It happened on Wednesday evening, the night before the final presentation.
I googled the error message, it turns out there are a few solutions out there, suggested by the Apple discussion forum:
1) Take it into an Apple store and show them this error. Then have them fix it. It is a hardware problem and you can do nothing about it. Apple has to fix it.
2) Unplug everything, restart your Mac. (Tried this one, didn’t help, error message keeps coming back.)
3) Try another USB port. (Did that, error message did not go away.)
4) Try another device. (Tried this one- I plugged my ipad charger into the same USB port, the USB port was fine, the iPad was charging)
5) Finally, I unplugged everything again, waited out, restart the computer again. The green LED light was back on for literally a second, then the error message came back. The green LED was gone again. So under this situation, the Arduino is not even stable.
6) I then eliminate many circuits on the breadboard, decided only to try out the three basic LEDs on the breadboard, the error message still popped up.
I also tried my 2nd computer with exactly code and board, which is a PC, and this happened:
If this something I did to trigger short-circuit, it could happen long time ago. Why did this happen? Did my Arduino die?
Final presentation:
Final BOM pictures (good &bad)
Hi Caroline, I’ll check in with your blog on the 16th to view your final write-up that follows the checklist on our class page. In the meantime, here is some feedback from your final presentation.
I admire the effort you’ve made on your project— the current result is still raw, but you’ve clearly thought through the justification for a simple approach, and you’ve started to bring a satisfying effort of interactivity to the project as well. Even a short series of LEDs is very effective, and keeps the glove simple to use for multiple audience types. I encourage you to continue to develop the language of interaction around the LEDs, and the language of output from the LEDs, particularly around multiple use cases, audience members, materials, and climates.
For your final write-up, it would be great to see additional context and background research on the warming glove and/or warming wearable— as this technology has been around for a while, how is your glove differentiated from other warming wearables?
It’s great to see that each of your choices has been thoroughly considered, which became apparent to me during your presentation’s Q&A, and your response “Safety First.” While keeping this priority in mind, I think you’re reaching a point where you might be able to extend the thermoeletricity throughout the glove— a Peltier thermoelectric device may be a cheaper technology to use in the long run. It may also be useful for you to dissect the thermo-output devices you are currently using, so you can make your own custom warmers.