Technical Explorations

To implement a working model of my memory marbles as proof of concept, I looked into various possible technologies for the detection of marbles and transfer/reading of data. RFID and Bluetooth were the most common and appropriate technologies for an ideal implementation. I ventured out to the Hong Kong RFID Centre in Shatin to take a look at the various forms (tags and readers) and uses in real applications. It was quite interesting, but the smallest RFID tags were still too big to be used with marbles (1.75cm diameter). Additionally, since RFID tag and reader must be placed parallel of each other for proper data transfer, tags inside a mable may end up sitting perpendicular to a reader because of the rolling nature of marbles resulting in no tag detection.

Due to project time constraints, I have decided to simulate a working interactive model using micro-controllers and switches to communicate between the physical model and PC. Switches installed in the physical model will be triggered by marbles that are inputted, and signals will be sent to a keyboard interface to activate a particular keystroke. A program running on the PC will then receive the keystroke as input and output audio and visual displays.

General technical overview of the actual implementation versus the ideal implementation.

{ Tags: embedded, sketch, thesis }