Conclusion

I think that this budget version of a Morse code encoder is liked (by myself) is because of its simplicity and also its feasibility. I know some people may look at it and deem it too simple but it is a first time for me to create something like this I see it as an accomplishment though now I do feel like implementing more things to it and then applying the whole thing to a larger scale.

This wont be anytime soon (but definitely after I complete university) I feel like I will be incorporating more components to it. I know for sure that a piezo speaker will be attached to it, this will allow me to either use a piezo speaker or a led or even both components together to encode and output the characters.

I am also aware that there is aversion of the Arduino board that allows the user to transfer data over the internet. This got me thinking, why not use the same code, make the necessary adjustments and then have the audio sent over the internet to a recipient on the other end?
Then (by some miracle if I get good enough) create that Flash interface I mentioned weeks ago and have that implemented on both end (myself and the recipient) and when the messages are sent back and forth there will be no need to have a speaker/mic/camera present to see/hear what the Arduino is doing because it will all be visible on screen. It will also be very much more cost effective than buying all the hardware.

I have also learnt something very important while working with these components – Always have backup components. It will be important if the work was being showcased and one of the parts goes missing or just dies – course I can’t imagine being that good any time soon. But more primarily because you may over calculate something causing the components to be fried, resistors may not be powerful enough (I tried the Arduino iPod hack and my iPod nearly died!) or the component may simply be dead on arrival and you may not have enough time to go back and have them run their checks through before agreeing you to have a replacement. And last but not least – patience. The number of time you may haven to go back and adjust a single digit to reach perfection is unbearable – but I guess all that hard work is what makes you appreciate it.

I won’t be posting here any time soon, but I should be back here in a couple of weeks when uni ends.

Adios

Project Complete

I finally overcame the problem of how to counter the gap between each character. I was looking through some of the coding from the Arduino sketchbook and then stumbled on to something that made me think. I saw this:

Break;

It seemed to do the trick in this sketch so why not on my one, it wouldn’t hurt to try. So I decided to have the Arduino encode for me the characters “ABBA”, and then in the code where the characters and their Morse code had been defined I added the ‘break;’ expression only after the letter A. this way I would know if it worked because after the letter A I would notice a short gap before the next letter but not see one when the letter B was output.

Surprise Surprise it worked!

The whole thing was working flawlessly; the characters were being encoded perfectly by the led, the break between the characters was long enough to be noticeable but not so long that it made you think the next dot/dash was part of the previous character.

I kept being paranoid and double checking all the dots and dashes to make sure that the lights were outputting the code correctly because I would probably lose my sanity if after all this found out that the whole thing works except the coding/lighting was wrong. Luckily it was working fine and I felt accomplished from witnessing it (numerous times).

I took a short recording of it in action (restricted due to memory card size), you can see it below.

Final artifact in action. Tada!

Project Update

Ok I think I have it. Someone over at the Arduino forums solved this for me, to be honest I don’t exactly know what this part of the code does but it seems to have done the trick.

int len = strlen(textDemo);

They instructed that I enter this piece of the code in the main body as part of the loop. I’m pretty sure that this calls up the string but I can not be 100% sure.

After integrating this in to the code the whole thing compiled but I was experiencing one more problem, the characters were being outputted to close together and it was hard for me to tell when one character code had ended and when another had begun.

I’m short on time so I hope I can find a solution to this.

A quick shot showing my current setup

Project Update

I have completed quite a bit of the coding so far. I have been to include both cases of a character together rather than writing them both out with their separate but same code, this cut down significantly on the size of the code. I was also told to make the light stay on about 3 times as long for the dash then the dot so that the viewer will be able to tell the difference significantly.

I must have like 10 different versions of the code so far because I have tried something different in each one of them but none seem to do exactly as I need it to except for a little from here and a little from there. I’m having a hard time debugging the whole thing to see exactly which part of the code is making each of them work but its proving very difficult.

I think I’ll take a break for the time being from this and query a few of the students and folks online to see if anyone can relieve me of this frustration.

Cornelia Parker

I don’t know when university opens up again but I remember seeing and hearing some interesting information on Cornelia Parker somewhere and thought I’d share some here.

Cornelia Parker was born in 1956, she is a British sculptor and an installation artist. In the past she has been associated with the BritArt movement. She began her study at Gloucestershire College of Art & Design (1974 - 75) and the moved on to Wolverhampton Polytechnic (1975 - 78). She received her MFA from Reading University in 1982 and then went on to pick up an honorary doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton in the year 2000. She had been nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997.

Parker usually engages herself with more site specific work, but the piece of work created by her which really got my attention was called Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991). This was a pretty large installation and what she basically did was have a wooden shed blown up to pieces by soldiers. What she did then is the best bit, she arranged the fragments of this shed in a large room (suspended in mid air as well) - as if you were looking at a freeze frame from when the shed exploded. And then in the centre she placed a light bulb, this was used to represent the source of all this energy and secondly to cast dramatic shadows of the wood on to the walls.

Cold Dark Matter: Exploded View

Looking at her work somehow gives me the feeling that I'm looking in to the eye of the storm. After browsing and analyzing many of her works you begin to realise that she is fascinated by cartoon deaths, explosions and so on. Through a combination of visual and verbal mentions, her work begins to trigger cultural metaphors and even personal associations which allow the viewer to witness the transformation of something most inadequate in to something that suddenly becomes compelling and extraordinary.

'Breathless' (2001) - Flattened orchestral instruments, positioned and suspended as if ready to play their sheet music

Looking at Parker's pieces I can see that the significance of each hardware is pretty dramatic, and I think this is simply because she makes no use of a large colour palette whatsoever. But all of her installations have their own distinctive personality which separates every single piece from each other - though it's importance is still there nonetheless. Her suspended pieces look intriguing, I guess every piece fits together like a jigsaw puzzle - and if one piece form the installation were to be removed then it would simply look incomplete.


Bibliography

Cold dark matter:
http://www.tate.org.uk/colddarkmatter/

Breathless:
http://www.cambridge2000.com/gallery/html/P2262143e.html

Video Update

Well we’re still on holidays but I thought this would be a good time to throw up some of the old videos I took at home when I was experimenting with the Arduino board. Here they are:

Led on/off

Knight Rider

Led Fade

KnockSensor

Piezo Speaker

Button

Servos

Automatic Servos

Potentiometer Controlled Led

These are pretty much all of the tutorialsI have gone through, disecting their codes to help me understand better and to make more sense of it.

Back to the holiday.

Project Update

Ok so I’ve been learning Morse code in my spare time in order to be able tell if the Arduino's led is emmiting the correct codes or not. I’ve learnt about ¾ of it but I still think the board chucks them out too fast for me to understand.

Morse code decoded

Now to the code itself, I know how to turn the led on/off its pretty simple. But giving the board a phrase and having it output that in light dot’s and dashes is another story. I signed up to the Arduino and a few other forums to see if anyone could render me their assistance in how to start of with this coding piece. And they all pretty much said the same thing, “Start by defining the variables and the led HIGH and LOW”.

Mentally I kind of have the coding fleshed out. From past experiences of programming in many languages I knew this much:

- Define the variables (dots, dashes, led pins and most importantly the text string which is to encoded)
- Call up the text string and have the text encoded
- Define the letters in the alphabet and numbers with the DoDit (dot) and DoDash (dash) expressions
- Define the pins HIGH and LOW for DoDit and DoDash
- Figure out how to add a delay between each character

After many frustrating hours of coding I had something, it wasn’t working yet but I knew it was something I could work on. At the moment it was a huge text wall but I had included comments all over the place so I wouldn’t get lost.

Credits go to Daniel Andrade at www.danielandrade.com for notifying me of the DoDot and DoDash expressions and how to use them correctly. I would’ve been stuck a long time without that piece of information.

I’ve got parts of the code on a few forums to see if any one can help me out any so I’ll have to wait to see what feedback I receive.


Bibliography

Morse code map:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~djg11/howcomputerswork/