Haptics
Day One
Today was my first time working with Vibrational Motors! And my first real foray into Arduino and programming since PComp...
And it was encouraging!
Starting off we have our first project
Project 1
Hello Vibe Motors
Using Arduino’s built in sketch for “Blink”, intended for LED’s but works great for testing any sort of simple on off interaction, Martha, Leia, and myself got to wsork.
Using this layout provided in our syllabus we hooked up the motor
We got the vibe motor working pretty easily and decided to test it on different surfaces for some tonal reference.
Also included but not documented was our testing it on our facemasks which yielded a pretty fun sensation.
At this point we were just getting the hang of things and had not begun any ideation for prototyping.
Incorporating Arduino’s sketch for “Fade” (again an LED intended sketch works great for vibes though), we were able to feel the breadth of the power to the vibes. Anything less than 80 was a noticeably different kind of feeling than those between 100-200 and then the more pronounced BUZZ of a 255 powered motor. This sketch became a little more fun when incorporated into the following Project...
Project 2
Motor Arrays
This was exciting to me personally because I was picturing a potential field or blanket of vibrational motors. I learned quickly that the power required for this is a bit nuts but still... arrays are cool with haptic interaction >:)
Using this schema, we set it up pretty much as seen and got everything functioning. However, this next bit of code is where we started to get excited about new interactions rather than on and off, and instead staggered the way that the vibrational motors were initiated.
Here in this sketch, we have our 3 Vibes attached to pins 9, 10 and 11 and a variable amounting to the power sent to them. It’s sort of a “wave” effect, passing through the vibration motors, increasing in intensity as they turn on.
This staggered, flow in power influenced how we explored the next sketch.
Project 3
Haptic Motor Driver
The setup :)))
While this worked all fine and dandy for gettin a buzzer to do the many options provided in the Adafruit Driver library, we decided to try something:
We wanted to see if two vibe motors could be linked in parallel and if they would still work!
Arbitrarily choosing from these signals in the library to work with (unfortunately the original sketch is lost and we have a version with a Time of Flight test incorporated but you can still see the numbers) we set the vibrators to a short sequence of 3 buzzes then back to off, with a delay before restarting that sequence.
The two vibes DO work in parallel! The one further from the power is noticeably lighter but in such a way that that difference in felt power can aid to an interaction.
While unable to be properly caught in a video form of use, this very arbitrary choice of buzzes 62, 51, and 50 alongside the slight variations in power between the two vibrators felt very much like an organic heartbeat! I’m not sure it would have felt as organic with two vibes at the same power or one concentrated vibe.
After this first day, we broke for the night deciding that we would pursue this heartbeat idea in a prototype on day 2. Perhaps a funny interaction where one’s heart begins to beat faster as they approach a crush :)