Week 3 Sofia Lowery

 Sofia Lowery, PATHS-UP: Week 3

I did my research presentation with Chloe Diehl because we ended up collaborating on most of this week's projects. We did two major things: we combined a pulse oximeter and a pedometer into our smartwatches, and we played a duet on our Arduino Uno boards. 

We both had our fair share of struggles. For combining the smartwatch features, we learned that combining code was more complicated than it seemed. We had to implement the usage of buttons on the watch that, upon pressing, would display the respective feature. Coding that in with the help of Ms. Kim allowed us to have more functionality in our watches. In the future, we could use that to have up to four features. 

For the duet, we did a lot of researching to turn music notes into code. By taking the sample version of Happy Birthday, we converted notes to concert pitch, found their respective frequencies, and transcribed the rhythms ourselves. Chloe and I had separate boards, so our processes differed a little bit. At the end, we had to find a way to sync up the boards so that they'd play at the same time. By adjusting the note delay and implementing a start button, we were able to play our songs together in full sync. 

I definitely plan on bringing this musical experience back to school, as the arts are always welcome. Being able to create a unique performance in an unexpected way is what our school is all about, so I'd be glad to tell people how I played music through code. 

My future plans with the concepts I've picked up during the PATHS-UP program are a mystery to me. I joined the camp because I plan on heading into a STEM field of physics, engineering, and/or math. While what I plan to study may not be working with code as much as a computer scientist might, I figured that it was an important skill that may be handy on occasions. I was pleasantly surprised to discover all that I can do with a little code, so I definitely plan on utilizing this knowledge in the future. As of now, I still don't know all of the opportunities that are open to me now, but I'm open to looking at them. 

I was able to put a movie onto my Smartwatch. I got an SD card, converted an MP4 to TSV, and let it play on the watch. The screen is small and the audio has a lot of feedback, but it was really fun to see what other clips I could put on the watch. If I had more, I could use a button to switch from clip to clip, or "channel to channel".

Chloe and I worked to combine code, allowing the watch to display a pedometer and pulse oximeter with just the push of a button!

This was the most fun project for me: using Arduinos to play songs. We coded each note and rest ourselves, no uploading or anything. It was a time consuming process, but the end product was worth it.