WEEK 16/17: IT ALMOST WORKED...

Unfortunately, I was unable to complete as much as I would want to-- with life being incredibly crazy and busy at this point, and the nature of electronics as the medium, even fixing mistakes is so time-consuming. It's not a simple "CTRL + Z." You have to buy more and more products and spend more time soldering, etc. Not to mention the limited times of the on-campus labs. Not to say these are valid excuses, but I couldn't bring myself to work on this project to the best of my ability nevertheless.

ABOVE: Implementing new microphone chip.

WEEK 16:

I re-installed the new microphone chip (bought from Amazon). I ended having to go through all 3 of them (trying to remove the microphone chip and adding it to the existing mic line in the phone casing, etc) and it finally worked!...for a little bit.

I wish I had proper documentation of this-- I got too cocky. It worked, the Raspberry Pi detected regular levels and everything. Upon securing the phone together, something happened where the chip just, breaks (or at this point we thought it broke). There wasn't enough time to purchase any more chips, and at this point there was nothing that could be done.

This is when I asked the Professor for an extension and I was graciously given it.

ABOVE: The microphone chip layout.

WEEK 17:

First things first, I finally got the pillar! After weeks of looking, I found something that looked really nice off of Facebook Marketplace from a very nice older lady up in San Clemente. It cost a pretty penny (even after being marked down 75% -- - $185 to $75 after some convincing) but it was worth it! I am unsure what it is made out of (it sounds like metal when knocked on but it also feels like wood).

ABOVE: The pillar.

After finally getting more time to sit down and debug, I was able to get help from the Makerspace to operate an oscillator and figure out that the microphone was working, just at such a small scale.

ABOVE: Using the oscillator to debug the microphone issues.

At a later point in the week, I tried to set up the microphone to a GPIO pin to potentially make the signal stronger and maybe louder, but that chip only outputs analog information, while GPIO only reads digital. I would need to get an adapter chip to convert the information (yet another thing to solder...).

It was too late to purchase an adapter before the presentation, so I just made sure to work on the code so that it could work. I got it to work half on my laptop and half through the Raspberry Pi (the microphone is coming through my laptop, and the voice is coming through the speaker on the phone).

However, in the process of putting away the phone to transport for the presentation, I believe the speaker broke so that the code did not work for whatever reason (but when touching the tip of the jack, it still amplifies sound as it has been doing the entire time). I don't understand what exactly happened, so I had to instead output it as print statements on my terminal.

Just great.

A lot needs to be done, but it's definitely doable in the time I have left.

Tasks Remaining:

• Finalize personality encoding

• Install microphone adapter

• Fix speaker

• Automatic boot system set

• WiFi compatibility @ school

• Paint pillar

• Install faux plants

• User testing & debugging

SEE SLIDE PRESENTATION: