ITP Physical Computing Journal

Thursday July 1st Get in at noon, race to finish lab, works somehow, need to get adjusted to student life.

Saturday July 3rd Computer store closed, one PIC and one clock short of a lab... This student thing presents new problems of leisure time.

Tuesday July 6th Catch up time. First problem, getting the chip programmer to work. Solution: reverse the direction on the power supply. Second problem, make it blink. so far no love. Perhaps related to power? Seem to have a lose connection somewhere, test led sometimes lights when plugged straight into power and ground, sometimes doesn't. Recut some wires, test connections. Odd LED appears to be direction sensitive, will only light up when one particular end is power, thought it should work either way. Is this a clue?

Wednesday July 7th Yes the LEDs are direction sensitive. Problem two solved as well, the 10k resistors snuck into the 10 Ohm resistor bin, even if my blinky was working I wouldn't have seen it! Of course it still doesn't work... New chip, no love. Can't afford another one, they cost more then my daily budget, blame NYU financial aid, they are killing me. Test power into chip, its getting it. Count pins. Test chip in EPICWin. Erase it. Reprogram. Grrrr. About to read Myron Krueger, perhaps it will magically work when I finish... Realize I saw Krueger talk a couple months ago. Barely could draw a connection between the writing and the presentation though, such different experiences. Thinking about what he did before I was born while I still can't blink is not ideal... Time I think to pull everything apart and start again. Hmmm, half the components off and I realize there is no undo button on these things. Reality strikes again. Guess that's the fun part, no?

IT WORKS!!!!!!!

had the reset pin going to ground instead of power....

wow now I'm actually about to try the right weeks lab...

actually I need to add a switch.

WOOOOOO that was easy. going to skip the remainder of that lab and try to do this weeks... off to the irons.

much time passes. the POT is sending info to the serial, working. I am drained. I've practically caught up with the labs except I haven't done a bit of anything creative yet... Maybe in that half hour between the lab opening up and class...

Thursday July 8th Morning magic, in 20 minutes before class I get the LED to blink based on the value from the POT control. And send serial. Then it stops working. Hours... Works again, I hate computer cables, we have bad history going back to Apple IIs or something... Finally though, its ifing the variable and reversing the blinking so low numbers are slow blinks, high numbers fast. Can't wait to touch those motors...

Saturday July 10th On this day our protaganist realizes he can not afford a motor, bad because he wants to play with them. Damn. Instead he decides to play with Processing instead, its free you know. Goal is to get Processing to read and respond to serial input. Attempt one results in little bursts two digit numbers. It sees the data, but wtf? After much error and occasional trial he realizes there is a guide in the forthcoming class notes. Ohhhh, its like that. Actually they don't help, code won't copy and paste. Tomorrow... Sunday July 11th The problem I think is that I just don't know Processing well enough yet. This "type" shite is killing me. With hand built code crossed with future class notes I have the numbers printing properly. But they are strings, I can't figure out how to make them useful numbers again. The upside is that I'm learning way more about Processing in the process. Downside is that nothing much physical computing wise is happing cause of it. All I want is a nice number to play with....