I got my paper screen back from the AMS last Wednesday, and the laser cutting looks great. I also got multiple LED drivers daisy-chained together and lighting multiple LEDs. My code was starting to get unwieldy, though, so I met with Rory again to get some help organizing it. We ended up scrapping a bunch of code and rewriting it with separate functions to control the value of the parent lights (the LEDs that are lit first, based on the count of bracelet stretches) and to control the values of the child lights (the groups of LEDs that glow around each parent light). I also got the stretch sensor to function as a trigger, based on code I found on the Physical Computing site, and I created a counter to keep track of how many times the bracelet is tugged. I’m having a hard time integrating the parts of my sketch, however. I wanted to be finished coding by now and be well into assembling the display, but I’m hesitant to mess with my circuit, which is currently functional, until I have the all of the code working together. Farewell to the idea of a nice wooden frame to house the screen, and so long to randomizing the selection of the light families to ignite! I am jettisoning the plans I had for this project left and right. It’s frustrating to know that what I present on Thursday won’t look as finished as I want it too, but hopefully the guts will be solid enough that I can build on them for another iteration.

Update: The first prototype of Velas is working, including a switch to segue from collecting the tug count to displaying the lights. The selection of which light families to display still isn’t random, but hopefully I’ll be able to get that working for next week.