BloomBox: Giving Flora a Voice through Technology
This project was completed for EE 186 Introduction to Electrical Engineering and Problem Solving II. This individual project explores the interaction between humans and nature by giving plants the ability to "sing" when you touch them.
To achieve this goal, I used a swept frequency capacitive sensor to detect electric fields generated through plant and human contact. This data is collected and converted into audio using an open source sound synthesis library. The sensor is from Disney Research, called Touche, which is adapted for use on the Arduino Uno and another Arduino Uno is used to generate the audio using the Mozzi library. With further research and study, I can reduce the system to one Arduino, build a filter to remove any unwanted noise, calibrate the sensor to differentiate states of touch, expand into a network of plants, and possibly differentiate types of flora each with a specific sound through a matrix structure. I hope to showcase this as an interactive art exhibit in the future.
Skills Acquired:
- Implementing open source libraries and software
- designing a complex circuit involving sensors, GUI, signal processing, and electromagnetic theory
Skills Applied:
- Experience from Electrical Engineering coursework (EE 201, 224, 230, 311, 418, CRE 288)
- C programming/general knowledge programming
- Project Design, Planning, & Documentation
Resources:
- Electronics Technology Group - Parts Selection
- TLA
- Disney Research
- Mozzi Sound Synthesis Library
- Arduino.cc