Project 2 - Prototyping Systems of Control

Summary

I wanted to expand on my previous project and create a more interactive way to play with a bee’s natural system. Hopefully bringing more awareness to them as they are starting to become extinct and if they do will effect our ecosystem tremendously.

In the beginning, I really wanted to have my controller showcase the project by having its physical shape look like a bee. Although I later realized the difficulty of it, I then turned it into a box controller that would contain sensors with visuals to also depict what each one does.

The sensors I used for this project were the potentiometer for adding and removing bee’s and a force sensor that depending on how hard you apply pressure will add flowers for the bee’s to collect. To depict this through the controller I used a stress ball and added flower petals to it, now making the user have to squeeze it in order to add flowers. For the adding and removal of bee’s I drew a larger bee to depict adding bees and a tiny bee to depict removing a bee.

For the controller, I needed a shape that was long enough in width to hold my breadboard and because of it being so long, I found it difficult to be creative with the shape of the controller. Leading me to make the sensor controllers more interesting to create a fun playfulness to it that will intrigue users to want to play.

The future of this project would be to add a more gaming approach to it. As of right now this game seems more as a fun thing to play with for a couple of minutes and for the future it would be more creative to see levels and having to acquire a specific amount of honey in order to get to the next level.

The Controller