Playaround Workshop 玩趣工作坊

I joined a workshop a few days ago. It was awesome! I learned so much and met some new friends. The course i took was physical computing 2. It's about using arduino and some devices to make some noises. The mentors are Tobias and Marc. They are really COOOOL and so nice! Tobias is so cute, just like a cartoon character coming into real life.
At the beginning, Tobias introduced what is physical computing and showed us some clips. One of them is Yellow Drum Machine It's a interesting robot which plays on everything it sees. Then we started to do our led thing and instrument. In the three days, we learned so much stuff,like arduino, puredata, using capacitors and NAND gate IC to make some noises, and using sensors to controll the noises. It was so much fun! We even hacked into the toys!

After 3 days of lectures, we started to do our final project. We were to make a interacting baby cart. It's about doing some interactions with the baby. For example, when we get very close to the baby, the baby would record what we say and play it with different tones. If we continue to shake the baby cart, the baby would play the sound with a violent tone. Well... This was the original idea. But we had some problems doing the voice. At last, we decided to make it more simple, just play different sound under different situatiion.

On the last day, it's the day for the presentation of the workshop. After the speeches, every mentor had some performances. I have to say, They Rock! It was so amazing! Then it's time for every team's present. When it was about our turn, there were some porblems. The pc is too hot so that the program didn't work. After emergency rescue, we finally made the program work.

After all teams had present, it's the end of the workshop. It's time for taking pictures and certificate~ I finally could have pics with Tobias and Marc, Ha. This is such a great experience. I'm going to miss everyone. :)


Here are some links to learn more.
Playaround wiki
flickr of microplayground
Our TA, Suno's flickr