September 21, 2023

During this first class, the general outline and objectives for this course were discussed. Since we are going to be working with arduino and manufacturing for our project development, this class was mainly focused on experimenting with both, arduino and manufacturing. Whatever was chosen to create during the class, had to be able to be taken apart, meaning that no glue or similar materials could be used.

Based on these specifications a scaled movie set prototype was created (Figure 1). The movie set consists of a rotating door which is activated by a step pedal, to simulate a haunted door which opens by itself. Both the door and the step pedal were manufactured using cardboard. Rubber bands and small coils were used to attach different sensors to the corresponding elements. 

Figure 1. Movie set prototype 

The door was activated by a tilt sensor which was placed on the step pedal, which originally had a 45 degree angle. By stepping on the step pedal, the rotating servo motor which is attached to the base of the door is activated, making the door rotate 90 degrees. The door will return to its original position when the tilt sensor returns to the original position, meaning the step pedal is no longer being pressed. Additionally, two LEDs were added to the door to simulate ghost eyes which. These were activated with the pressing of the step pedal. The arduino code is included in Appendix 1.