Physical Computing

Flowers made from dog toys and silk flower petals, attached to servo motors. A light (photo) sensor senses the light and the flowers either hid or come out. Inspired by the movie Coraline.

Digital Flowers from Steve Varga on Vimeo.

Simple LED and momentary push-button combination lock created with PIC chip for Physical Computing class. Code by Joel Murphy (teacher), circuit by me.

The lock lets you program in a code, then you have to enter it correctly to make the green light turn on. When the green light turns on, you have a set amount of time to reprogram the lock. Really cool demonstration of something powerful and simple that can be done using PicBasic Pro

Video quality blows, I think the red LEDs were throwing off the focus sensor :/

LED Lock from Steve Varga on Vimeo.

Here’s my first simple attempt at programming with PicBasic Pro. I wanted to expand upon it a bit but I’m snowed in so this is gonna be my first iteration at least…simple sequence of LED lights firing in succession

LED Sequence with PIC chip from Steve Varga on Vimeo.

Here is my homework for week two, created using instructions and schematics from Joel Murphy’s Site. We are learning about capacitors and transistors. Capacitors make sense, transistors I’m still a bit fuzzy about but starting to make sense. The first circuit is a transistor toggle switch, basically when you hit the switch it uses the PNP/NPN transistors to redirect the flow of electricity to the other LED. The second is a photoresistor and a potentiometer hooked up to and LED and a transistor, which allows you to turn on/off the LED. This one makes sense to me, the electricity takes the path of least resistance, so as the resistance of the photoresistor increases the electricity begins to move through the LED. The third is using a capacitor to fade an LED on and off.
Video coming soon, currently uploading….

First setup for pcomp breadboard! Power going through 5v Regulator and 2 capacitors, delivering 5v of power