It takes me 2 months to make this project, from learning the code to finishing the physical glove. My background is graphic design and GUI design, which all mainly based on the screen. This time I have made a physical thing combining with wearable technology. It’s a really good experience for me. At the beginning I couldn’t help finding “Ctrl + Z” even I did the physical part. I was just a toddler when facing the code and technology. I have documented the whole process, which I want to share. It’s in the beginning, I’m trying to link bluetooth. I was so silly that I spent 2 weeks to solve the bluetooth problem, as I didn’t read the tutorial carefully at the beginning. I search and changed a lot of code, but nothing improved… Special thanks to Ayo and Aisen, who pointed out my problems and guide me to solve them.
I’m testing the piezo sensors to give signals to GarageBand for generating the sounds. Special thanks to Ayo again, who help me with the basic technology of this part! I used the “Serial_MIDI_Converter_V2” to convert Arduino signals for GarageBand.
I’m testing the photocell sensor for recognizing different color surfaces. I used the RGB color sensor at the beginning, but the strings it provided made my code work difficult. So I used photocell sensor instead.
Making the functions done, I begin to put modules onto the glove.
I added LEDs and plastic cover for the glove. But the power could not stand for many modules, so I had to remove the LEDs. The plastic cover was for showing the wish, keeping my happiness long and fresh. But it made the glove too tight that affected me to tap my fingers. Besides the visual effect was not as good as I expected. So I removed it as well.
My glove was really tight that the wires were often broken at the joint. So I had to make the glove loose. And I also changed the battery to a more powerful one.
It is working well when I test it.
But after the final video for demonstrating, the glove was totally broken. I had to use conductive threads to replace the metal wires so as to solve the problem.
Although it is not a powerful glove, it makes me understand more about the design philosophy I believe, “Machine adapts to human, instead human adapting to machine”. I have a lot of benefits. This project shows me problems and prompts me inspirations as well. I can think more about the new instruments, more natural to play, more fun to play. Good luck for my next semester’s Future Instrument, I’ll try to design a guitar with new functions.