In this week's lab we started thinking about the design for our first prototype so that we could order all the parts we needed and start the building phase. After much research on the internet we found that in order to record rotations in the cube we needed some encoders, usually found in older trackball mice; six of them, one for each axis.
As we further developed the design we realised not only encoders might not be a good solution because of size and movement processing issues, but also that Arduino might have something similar.
Luckily there is a component called a Potentiometer for Arduino which is exactly what we needed. This switch resembles a light dimmer which changes value according to how much you turn it.
The next problem was that this Potentiometer would stop at 360 degrees and we needed something that could turn continuously. After more research on the web we found a version of the Potentiometer that behaved exactly like we wanted, so we decided to use an Arduino board as the core processing unit for our cube.
In our first prototype we also wanted to incorporate RGB LEDs, one for each cube, in order to give feedback to the user as to whether the rotation mapped successfully to a command (green) or not (red). While trying to figure out how to insert them and connect them we realised this might not be feasible because every time a user would rotate the cube, the LED's wires would also rotate and eventually snap.
Considering LED feedback is a minor, more aesthetic feature, it seemed pointless to design the whole cube around it, so I proposed to swap visual feedback for haptic feedback. This decision was well accepted by the group and so we will now start looking at how to include vibration.
