This week's assignment is creating the interrupted fade interaction. I decided to make a 'Breathing balloon'. The balloon light is going to fade smoothly until the user blowing the fade will be interrupted. I imagine this exercise is like when we are breathing normally and then something such as sneezing or blowing interrupted our breathing system. Imagine like this balloon is alive and when we blow at it, it suddenly feels ticklish.
Here's the result (better with sound)
Technical part
To make the smooth fade, I used sine fade example, one of the fading light examples in class. I try to understand the calculation of the light level and I found that if I change the function from sine to cosine or tangent, it will change the graph of the fade. Here is some example
Smoothly sine fade
float lightLevel = (sin((angle * PI / 180) + PI / 2) + 1) * 127.5;
Cosine Fade
float lightLevel = (cos((angle * PI / 180) + PI / 2) + 1) * 127.5;
The result of this fade does not show a lot of diffenciation from sine fade
Tangent Fad
float lightLevel = (tan((angle * PI / 180) + PI / 2) + 1) * 127.5;
The result of this fade is seem like the light is blinking. From the graph I feel like the The tan function make the value change faster.
Another thing I found from the calculation part is if I reduce the amount of the angle by reducing the radiant, The fade is going to be faster.
Testing with light
Physical Part
Components
- LED
Circuit Diagram
For the interaction, I used the sound detector to detect the blowing. I used to compare the result of the sound detector and the piezo sensor. I found that the sound sensor is more consistent than the piezo.
In the coding part, from the example, Tom created an array to store the light level for smooth fading. In this case, I want the value to change when the sensor reaches the threshold. So, instead of making an array, I use the return function to calculate the value every time. When the sensor value reaches the threshold, it will activate the smooth or interrupted fade function.
I decided to used balloon as a diffuser of the LED
balloon testing
I really like the glowing effect of the balloon. The light is reflected on every part of the surface. might get this effect because of the translucent of the balloon.
Testing with many balloons
After assembling 6 balloons together, I found that my piece looks similar to airbags in our lungs!
Lastly, one extra thing I learned from creating this assignment is how to effectively blow the balloon.