// Physical Computing Project #1: Chair Massager
10/6/2004
We applied the chair massager to a lab chair yesterday and placed it in the 3D lab. Overall, four students interacted with the chair. The first student saw us install the project and didn't have much of a response. They later explained that they expected such an effect. Another student sat down to discover the chair immediately started vibrating and quickly jumped up and moved. Student #3 placed her belongings on the desk, but once she sat down she discovered the wires and promptly changed seats. By the time student #4 arrived, there were no seats left available. The investigated the chair, and ultimately sat down. It didn't take long before they pushed the chair away and moved to another. After student #4, the traffic in the lab began to die down.
The system was set up to activate after 50,000 milliseconds and then run for another 50,000. It would have been nice if we could have better concealed the massager and wires, as well as trigger the system to reset once a user got off the switch.
10/4/2004
We powered a PIC with the usual 5V, while on the other end of the breadboard we hooked up a 12V Reed Relay to receive a charge from pord.1. I'm surprised at how difficult it seems to find out info on relays (though they're pretty simple). Todd was helpful, and the instructions on the box are pretty easy to follow.
We used the separate buses on the boards and made sure that the 12V being fed into the massage motors didn't come in contact with the chip. We also connected all grounds on the board together.
On a side note, I found a great resource on resistor color stripes. Make sure you try it in a browser other than Safari.