MoodBot Final Post

When we last accounted the progress of our project, we had just ordered extended male and female cords and black wristbands off of Amazon in order to go more into the design aspect of our project. We were unsure of how the temperature would read off the wrist and we could not adjust it until we had the wristband and the cords to secure the temperature sensor on the wrist. The stretchy fabric was a smart choice; it conforms to fit any wrist size snuggly and the temperature sensor can be stuck underneath easily.

When we first tried the combination, the readings were skewed from what we had first configured with the room temperatures. Which was to be expected, but the read out was jumping up and down radically. Confused as to why it would be fluctuating so dramatically, we first thought it might have been faulty wiring (the cords had been moderately priced from a third-party seller on Amazon and one had broken already during set-up).

We also speculated whether it was just a dud sensor. Rachel and I swapped out SparkFun boards and reset up the temperature sensor still using the long wires and this time the read out was less sporadic, though we did notice the temperatures were much lower than what it we got when the sensor was directly attached to the board (more than likely because the board itself releases a lot of heat).

We adapted the temperatures to fit the range of what both of our wrists were reading out. There was enough difference between the temperature of our wrists to create a scale that would presumably cover the typical range for anyone. Knowing the span of our scale, we added more moods (one to each end of the spectrum) including melancholy.

We noted that we needed to make sure the temperature sensor works on whichever board we check when we present the MoodBot. Because the wrist is a pretty constant measure of temperature unlike the air, there is less variance in the mood in one sitting. Once it reads your mood, it is most likely going to retweet the same mood after the minute or so delay runs out. This is not necessarily a bad thing.

For accuracy, your mood would not typically vary from one minute to the next and neither would your body temperature, so the interaction between the body and the machine is doing what we intended. Overall, it reads accurately and tweets effectively. From here until we present the project later this week, our main priority is making sure the coding and device work each time we access it. The system tends to be fickle and running into a little hiccup on the day of would not be ideal.

This project has definitely been a learning curve for both me and Rachel. In hindsight, we were both incredibly nervous about taking on a project that required so much coding and technical expertise, something we both were considerably lacking. Our fear of hitting a horrible roadblock worked in our favor and after putting many hours in at the MakerSpace, we were able to complete the bulk of our project well before it was due.

It is hard not to be proud of the fact that we now have a working machine/technology that materialized out of nothing. It is even more impressive to us that our body is a technology in itself, providing data that is computed and then spit out through a social media platform. The relationship across these varying technologies is almost symbolic of how intertwined our bodies and media actually are (hence the pairing of our project to the biomedia unit).