Thanksgiving Progress

I’ve spent the last ten days or so visiting my brother in Alabama; consequentially, I’ve been both more and less productive than i expected. More so because there isn’t much to do here, particularly if you don’t have a car; less, because the only materials I have are whatever I brought with me. You can’t wire up a component you don’t have, and my accelerometer didn’t arrive at ITP before my flight to Birmingham.

Before I left ITP, though, I managed to solder my MP3 shield. It was the first time I’d ever soldered anything– to the best of my knowledge, my brother said we soldered in eighth grade shop class. I made some mistakes, but it’s not so scary to me anymore.

I also wrote pseudocode and then Arduino code for the sorting hat. I don’t know if any of this will work at all, though, because I hadn’t been able to wire anything up.

void loop
  if button pressed
    start questioning
  end
end
void questioning
  play preamble
  scramble questions
  start variables
  
  for each question
    play question
    while no_response
      if longenoughtime
        play canthearyou
      end
    end
    if response == nod
      variables++
    else response == shake
     variables++
    end
    if endstate
      break
    else
         playnoise(random)
    end
   play houseName(variables)
end

I’ve put the Arduino code on GitHub which is a practice I need to get back into– I weirdly don’t associate pcomp projects with “real” code that warrants version control. This is an attitude I need to mend.

In lieu of actual wiring, I created a fritzing sketch of my board. I’m not sure if I like fritzing– it’s somewhat helpful to see a visual representation of how to wire, but it’s much easier to represent most things with schematics. From here on out, I may just do that.

Finally, I updated my timeline with estimates of what I’ve completed. Earlier I had assumed I was done with recording lines, but now I think I need to record a few more. It’s hard to come up with questions for that hat, though. I’m also likely overestimating how finished I am with the coding, but I’m gonna let myself have my optimism before my flight back to New York and reality.