Here’s some pics from my second experiment. This time I used an ultrasonice sensor which wirelessly sends analog readings back to the computer via Zigbee.
The xbee module, the arduino and the ultrasonic sensor (which measures distance) are contained within the box and powered by a 9V battery.
The graphics on the screen behind are affected by the distance measured by the ultrasonic sensor….
short distance…
longer distance etc… ( see screen grabs below to see the effect on the processing sketch ).
The Zigbee module is the name for using small low-powered digital radios with high level communication protocols. It’s supposed to be a better and more efficent option for creating wireless networks (especially compared to Bluetooth). The main points are that it’s low-cost and low-powered and is designed to be easy to develop on small, cheap microprocessors… like arduinos. So considering we have an Xbee development kit and lots of arduion boards I decided to see what I could make. Plus after trying out bluetooth and arduino and finding the connection problematic it would be useful to find a reliable wireless technology that would work well with arduino.
After first finding a way to send commands to the xbee board through the arduino I eventually got two xbee modules talking to each other. My Pictures below show one of my experiments to send a wireless signal from one Xbee module to another. The idea was to make a box that contained an arduino board, a tilt switch and an Xbee module. It would be powered by a 9V battery. If you shook this box it would trigger the tilt switch and this would send a radio signal to the other Xbee module which would be attached to the PC via USB. This data would then run into the computer and affect the graphics in a processing sketch, making the graphics shake around like snow.
This is supposed to be the snow shaking…….. doesn’t it look real…
