WEEK 20/21: THE FINALE

It feels like a long time coming, but it's finally done. How did we get here?

ABOVE: Final Project in Exhibition

WEEK 20:

After finally getting a microphone that fits within the microphone housing, I was able to test to its full capabilities. By utilizing a lavaliere microphone and the Raspberry Pi's Bluetooth function, I was able to instantly intake audio. I no longer have to deal with any wiring issues! The only main issue is having to charge these microphones, but the cap is very easy to unscrew and screw, so it wouldn't be hard to maintain for the duration of the exhibition.

[IMAGE OF MIC]

I finally had the time to spray paint the pillar. I was worried for textural issues as warned to me in class, but it actually went smoothly and turned out perfect! It only took 2 full coats for the full thing to be covered-- you wouldn't even realize it was a different color! I used this spray paint:

ABOVE: Spray painting the pillar white.

At this point as well, I wanted to try to connect my project to the school wi-fi. After finding a monitor and keyboard/trackpad in Mandeville B-116, I was able to finally see my Raspberry Pi on a monitor (which hasn't happened until this point). I was aiming to try to connect to UCSD-Protected so that I could easily SSH at school. However, the duo-factor authentication part of the login was confusing and I couldn't figure out how to connect. I was able to utilize UCSD-Guest if I wanted to use OpenAI and ElevenLabs. I was also able to host a wireless hotspot from the Raspberry Pi to SSH from my laptop, but I would not be able to interact with any internet-required functionalities. Since it was connected to wi-fi though, there was hope.

After returning home, I had one goal in mind: set up a cron file for the project. With lots of help from ChatGPT, I was able to successfully set up a cron file to run within a virtual environment. With that, I was pretty certain it would work.

When I got to class, I set up the project, and of course, it didn't work. I was really worried that there was just no hope. I figured it was the wifi issue-- it seems like the phone connected to the hotspot I set up for the connection between my laptop and the phone. The professor kindly lent me his adapter to connect my project, and after prioritizing the UCSD-GUEST wi-fi on the Pi, it finally worked! There were some things I wanted to change which we will discuss in a second, but it worked!

WEEK 21:

I had a few fixes I wanted to make. Firstly, allow the user to interrupt the opening audio file with their decision instead of having to wait for the entire file to continue. Secondly, I wanted to adjust the audio's volume. Thirdly, I wanted to refine the personality prompts for the AI. I was able to include all of these and prepare it for the reception for the exhibition.

[IMAGE]

The day came, and after setting everything up, things were perfect. I had realized there is a bit of a lag time in between the user input and the AI output, so I added a sign to emphasize patience. However, I sadly realized the dial was lose and just not working, and there was no way I could fix it before the reception. A lot of people were having issues with this, and also a lot of people just didn't know how to use rotary phones in general. This was just an interesting find. Lastly, sometimes the project would just randomly reset back, and I was wondering if it was a loose wire. I took the phone back home for bug fixes.

I was able to fix the dial (I literally just had to snap it back into place, I don't know how that worked but it did). I then I looked into the last issue-- the phone resetting out of no where. I realized that the code breaks if it does not clearly hear the user's input and completely resets. I fixed this by just forcing the AI to continue to listen until it hears something. I sadly wasn't able to figure out how to adjust the audio of the opening file, but I decided it was better to hear it than to not.

ABOVE: User using the phone at the exhbition.

It finally works, a lot of people came up to me and expressed that it worked, and it was so incredibly relieving. It was nice because I finally took the time to reminisce on the purpose of this project anyways-- to invoke a sense of awkwardness, forcing someone to be left confused, which I feel like was able to create.

I'm proud of this outcome, and I hope people were able to enjoy it too.

ABOVE: Me standing with my final project :)