Goals for Week 7:
- Rough 5-minute long visual progression demo
- Experiment with integrating meditation tones with nature sounds
- Explore options for pedestal (for phone slot) and chair/cushion
- Sketches and vision boarding for room ambience
- Close-up images of RFID tag stones and higher quality documentation video
What We Accomplished & Learned:
5 Minute Visual Progression Demo
We had a 5 minute visual made, but since only three minutes of it seemed engaging, two minutes of it were commented out. Here is our 3 minute p5 sketch. At this point the colors are not customizable, but those blocks of code are very easy to add. We will add colors for the background RGB, the flow field particles RGB, the golden spiral circles RGB, and the mandala flower strokes & fill RGB values. (Here is the example referenced for the mandala flower visuals), and (here is the example referenced for the golden spiral animation)
It was interesting combining all of the small p5 sketches we had done in previous weeks, and making sure they transitioned nicely with each other. We are excited to get this new sketch working with the RFID color control with serial communications, and get some user feedback on what they like / dislike about it.
Integrating Meditation Tones w/ Nature Sounds
This week we also wanted to experiment with layering some subtle meditation tones (singing bowls, gongs, etc.) on top of our nature sounds for a more relaxing experience. We found an audio sample of soft singing bowls, edited it slightly, and successfully manipulated the code running on our p5 server to trigger the singing bowl audio whenever the experience begins. The bowl tones will continue (or repeat) until the phone is taken out of the phone slot, at which point everything will fade down to silence. We are happy with the effect so far because it is subtle but adds some complexity to the audio of our project.
Pedestal and Cushion Options
For the cushion, we really want something that is similar to a bean bag or floor cushion. Something like this might work well, although we might be able to find cheaper options as well!
Sketches & Vision Boarding for Room Ambience
We each did some sketching and vision boarding for what the inner ambience of the room could be like. Since we might have to focus on making the components of our Flow Room portable and modular, we are now faced with some interesting design challenges for things like deloying and diffusing the Neopixels. Two of our best options for the LED strips are probably to use backlighting (see the first image in Nate’s vision board below) or maybe fabric coverings (or this cotton stuff instead).
Nate’s sketch includes an overview of the room, with the projection in the front of the room and a small enclosure to house a strand of Neopixels for special effects (like fire or rain). The perimeter Neopixels could branch out from there, potentially on the back of some structure to backlight the room. Also connected would be the main control panel and the phone slot pedestal (which could maybe also house the projector?).
Improved Documentation
Based on feedback from our presentation, we wanted to improve and change some things about our 50% Progress Documentation. Specifically, people wanted to see close-up images of our RFID stones to get a better sense of the material, and we wanted to create a higher quality documentation video of the demo we had working.
Below, you can see some new pictures of our RFID stones and another video of our demo!
Nate and Elsa's Capstone 