Team name: 3Style
Author: SOK IN WAN – swan2077
Team members: Rui Yang Ma – ruma4908, Xavier Lee – xlee0777
This week we discussed about what lighting pattern we want for the installation and I started to write the code. As we want to create some interaction between skaters, instead of only each individual skater interact with one LED strip, we think that if only one skater sits on one sensor, there will be only one light turn on, which means that they need to collaborate with other skaters to fully light up all the LED strips. When the second skater sits on the other sensor, it will turn on the second LED strip, as well as change the pattern of LED strip 1. By doing that, we hope that the skater can notice the change and try to explore more different patterns with other skaters.
I have done some mock ups on illustrator to illustrate different patterns so that we can have some sense of the visual appealing during our group meeting. First of all, we think that one LED strip should represent one color, for example, LED A, represent green, LED B represent yellow. At first we thought that the interaction between each LED strip could be changing color when A and B both sit on the bench, but then we want to make the lighting more meaningful. Therefore, we decided that only turning on odd numbers of lights when only one person (A) sit on the seat, and then when the second person (B) sits on the bench, it will light up the even numbers of light.
I started to write the code of the state of both A and B sit on the bench, which is turned on green light on odd numbers, and blue light on even numbers. By doing so, I first wrote two for statements, variable i equal to 0, and j equal to 1, and then i=i+2, j=j+2. But the result was turning on all green light of odd numbers, and then turn on the blue light of even numbers, which is not what I want.
My ideal result is the light turn up green and blue alternatively, therefore, I used one variable i, and change my if statement to if (i%2 == 0), then turn up green color, else, turn up blue color.
Next step, we want a chasing effect, which is only turning up by section. I first wrote if i>10, then turn off light by setting a strip color (0,0,0). I were trying to make the lights to illuminate and have a ‘flowing effect’ from one end to another, but I ran into a problem as the lights are only flowing halfway. From the gif, half of the lights are not even working properly as there are ten lights stopping in at the end and the effects failed to appear.
I then add one more for loop to make the light return back. For(j=strip.numPixels()+10; j>10; j–), which means that the strips will light up from the other side, to make a returning flowing effect.
Another problem I got is that, the light is not l looping and it was just light up and wait for next light effect. It was doing a loop actually but it was just looping the same color, that’s why it looks like the light were not changing. This caused a problem, which is the LED A strip did not turn off, when there should be only LED B strip light up. Therefore, I wrote one more for statement to turn off the light, which results on a loop of turning on the light one by one, and then turn off. We think that this effect is easier to attract people’s attention.
I was planning to use yellow to represent the second LED strip, but I found that the color is too weak and not easy to recognize. Therefore, we decided to change to orange. When A and B both sit on the bench, there were three colors light up, but when A and C, B and C, there were only two color light up. Therefore, we adjust the colors for the situation of A and B. As the shape of LED 3 is a skateboard shape, therefore, we think that if only C sits on the bench, only half of the LED strip will light up, which means that the person cannot light up the skateboard by himself.
Playful Cities 
Great to see the mockups!
LikeLike