In your classes, studios and daily lives, you encounter problems and challenges in the urban and suburban environment. Your project will respond to one of these challenges by creating a digital (i.e., Arduino) intervention in the public realm in Philadelphia. This intervention will sense data in the urban environment and respond in real time (or, very near real time).
Your project may address whatever issues you’re most interested in, but I’d like to encourage you to root your project in either improving equity or managing an environmental challenge. There are many, many types of projects that can be situated in these contexts.
Your project may be one, single stand-alone intervention, but I encourage you to think about how it could contribute to a decentralized infrastructure. Too many smart city projects are isolated and, thus, have limited impact. How can yours scale?
You will work in teams of 3-4 people. Ideally, your team will have common interests, but diverse skills. The perfect team would include one person with a strong design vision, one person who likes to code, and one person who loves circuitry. In reality, everyone has some of each of these characteristics, but consider all of these needs as you build your team.
THE PLAN
To help you transition from labs to working on your own, you will complete your final project in two major phases. In the first phase, you will develop your project concept, and then dive into the details to ensure your concept is feasible. In the second phase, you will refine the project concept, develop a working prototype, and then refine the prototype.
Following is a brief sketch of the remaining assignments in the class. I will post more information on each assignment in the coming weeks.
Phase 1
Diagram
- You will create an elevator pitch for your project. What is a problem that you see in the urban environment? How does your project address this problem?
- You will diagram your project. Where will the project be located? What are you sensing? How are you responding? You will include a preliminary equipment list with costs.
- You will present your project concept to the class in 6 minutes.
Tutorial
- You will divide up your project, and think of the different connections and questions that need to be answered in order to build your project. Each person in your team will work on one piece of the overall design. (For example: how do you drive and power four servos simultaneously? how do you collect data from an anemometer?)
- Each person in your team will write a tutorial on this site on how to execute your Arduino question. Your tutorial will include a circuit diagram, code, and any other information you need to make your tutorial as clear as possible (e.g., text, images, or a brief video).
Phase 2
Many of you will find that, after exploring the details, your project concept will not work as you originally envisioned. That is OK. At this point, you will take a step back and think about how your project should evolve, based on your new technical knowledge and design considerations. You will execute this revised project for the rest of the semester.
Presentation
- You will complete the first draft of your project by creating a working, functional prototype.
- You will present your project to the class. You will talk to us about the design and technical questions your team is wresting with. We will give you constructive feedback on how to advance your project.
Final presentation + final blog post
- You will complete your final project and present it to the class and reviewers.
- You will share the final project output in a blog post (so the world can see your amazing projects!). You will including your diagram, a video of the project working, and any other relevant material that helps showcase your results. This is not a tutorial, so you will not need to post any code or circuit diagrams.