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18. Final Artefact, and Other Thoughts (Conclusion)

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In the end, I'm disappointed at what little I managed to accomplish, especially compared to my peers. But I must report, so here it is The module consists of the Arduino Mega (borrowed from the Lab), a Cytron mp3 shield, a HC-06 Bluetooth module, a speaker, and a battery pack.  I ended up just putting very simple buttons because I didn't have time to design nicer icons. I basically made a clunky remote control and music player, which is something , but really not what I had in mind in the beginning of this project. Based off this, here are changes I would have wanted to add if I had the time: - Made custom icons for the different audio track options (instead of track 1, track 2, track 3) - Overall designed the main control page better - Found more suitable tracks, or converted what I had to a lower bitrate in some way so that I would have tracks more appropriate for a children's toy. - 3d printed a solid plastic casing for the module, ins...
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17. Soldering On

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After my struggles with the Android app development, and the resulting changes that came about, I decided to finally shift my focus on the physical side an get my speakers up and running. Ron handed me an old cheap headset that apparently Xing Yu had broken, and told me I could just wreck it for parts, so I did Before the butchering What's left after This was functional, but the audio quality was pretty bad. Here's a comparison with the single speaker that I bought myself. I intended on switching to the single speaker, by ripping apart an old pair of earphones of my own to use the 3.5mm audio jack, but when I stripped all the wires and tried to reconnect it with the speaker, somehow I couldn't get any sound to come out. Surgery time  So I ended up just franken-attaching the new speaker to the two crappy speakers. You might have noticed in the previous video that I'm using a huge-ass Arduino board. What happened to the Nano? well the mp3 shield woul...
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16. Week 9 Sharing - Scheduling, problems and plans

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Progress hasn't been great. I'd hate to make excuses, but I think one key reason for my current state is that I severely underestimated the difficulty of the tasks I had set out to accomplish. After the week 9 progress sharing (the powerpoint will be included in the files), I'd had to reconsider what I'll be able to make at all. after the initial success with figuring out apps, I'm back to being stuck on making things. Issue 1 - Don't think I'll have time to figure out a custom mp3 player I had initially wanted to follow this tutorial  to work out a smaller and more compact music player, but with my struggles on the app side, I'll probably just end up using the Cytron mp3 shield , which I had also used last semester. The Cytron mp3 shield, which fits on an Arduino Uno This means that I'll need to take my project apart after I get it back after the semester, which sucks. The fact that the shield is no longer in production also means that I...
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15. App Development Crash Course From an App Developer

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(I swear I've never been more grateful that I'm not a complete hermit, and do in fact have friends) How the actual conversation went lol Like I knew my friend is an app developer, but I kind of felt bad to reach out to someone just for the purpose of getting their help, so by some divine providence my friend reached out and over a meal (my treat obvs) and coffee he helped me sort through all the confusion with Android Studio and got things off the ground basically. Here's what I managed to accomplish by myself, struggling with basic things like custom fonts and image importing Yeah it was just that other app from that basic tutorial, just with a different colour, an image, and the app name (which is also an image, I am a disgrace). Here's the results of my one day crash course with my friend! Finally figured out typography and better image handling, buttons, tab customisation, etc. I know it doesn't look like much, but most of the time was spe...
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14. Tutorial and Feedback

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This blog post will be primarily about the class discussion on the 3rd of January. Discussed current frustrations with Lin Yew regarding Android Studio. I had severely underestimated how complicated the software is, and the annoying thing is that most online tutorials either teach the most basic of basics, or assume you understand everything already. I'm at a stage where if a tutorial says "oh just add this bunch of code in", and my response is "yes but WHEREEEE". Also why?? I don't understand how most of it works. Lin Yew advised listing out all my tasks and solving one problem at a time, and prioritising establishing a Bluetooth communication with my own app first. Secondary priorities would be figuring out file transfer and voice recording, while graphics and design would be a tertiary priority. Basically: get SOMETHING to work. This discussion during class led to an interesting revelation - remember that Bluetooth tutorial which turns on an LED like...
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13. THE VICTIMS

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I thought I'd dedicate a post to the two plush toys I decided to dissect for the purposes of this project. Name: Nico the Panda (named after Nicolo Machivelli) Age: 5 yrs Total height: 38cm Body diameter: 23cm Body volume (est): 6370.63cm³ Nico is like a very generic teddy-bear shape, with a large ish torso volume, and thus a pretty "safe" size to be able to fit all the electronic parts inside.  This next victim is a really old plush toy that my mum managed to dig up when I told her I needed some blood sacrifices to increase my grades. Name: Lady Dog Age: ~15 yrs Total height: 24cm Body diameter: 7cm Body volume (est): 179.59cm³ It's much smaller compared to the panda, and she's the target size that I'm using as like the minimum size of the toy module. If my final module can fit in her then I think it should be small enough for most conventional childrens' plush toys.
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12. App Design v2

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Merry Christmas! Progress has unfortunately been pretty stagnant in the app-development front, but plod onwards I must, so here's the refined app design as per the feedback from the lecturers.  Wireflow for the new UI Main three tabs  The main page will first ask users to pair the app with the Bluetooth toy module. The first tab that will open after this will be the recording page, where the recordings will be saved automatically to the internal storage in the phone. "Tracks" tab The Tracks tab, where users can play, pause, and delete tracks, as well as choose which tracks to upload onto the toy module. Sleep tab The sleep tab has been simplified to switching the toy module to a lullaby mode, with a timer which can be cancelled if you just click on the middle button again. References: Android Wear design guidelines. (2017). Color - Style - Android Wear design guidelines. [online] Available at: https://designguidelines.withgoogle.c...
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