We made an appointment for today’s interview after the Intro class with Connor two weeks ago. We talked to Connor about our ideas for the project and told him what direction we wanted to experiment and try. He was very enthusiastic about giving us suggestions on several devices and answering our doubts about software.
Based on our thinking at the time, we needed a touchable interactive component to build an interactive object. He suggested that we could use the Touch Board he mentioned earlier with extended wires and conductors for Touch interaction. He also mentioned a piece of information that we didn’t know before the Touch Board’s sensing is based on changes in the way an object conducts electricity. This sensor is sensitive enough to trigger a switch when the surrounding electrical conductivity changes. This means that it’s not just zero-distance touches that can trigger the device, but very close distances.
This inductive feature greatly inspired our practice of allowing users to interact with our interactive box (as it’s called) in a more immersive and sci-fi way.
Connor also mentions another component called The Round Force Sensor Module from the Seeed, the manufacturer we mentioned earlier. This sensor can detect the force of the pressure, which allows us to show the extent of our effect by force. This also ties in well with one of the trigger effects we have in mind for the interaction box: zooming in and out of the picture.
We then asked Connor about some of the Kinect Sensor’s features. Connor notes that Kinect has a limited range of probes, and the number of probes depends on the version. This news caught us by surprise, and we found that we needed to frame our interactions in a space with slight variation in depth to achieve the right effect. This led to some changes in our thinking after that.
In addition, we asked Connor about the devices that TD can interconnect with. He told us that TouchDesigner had a wide range of hardware compatibility and could link most components we needed through Arduino or serial ports. The news was a great boost to our morale, although there was still a lot of work to be done.