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… technical issues

Programming in a group
Usually during a Lab, the code is created by more than one people, so it is very important to keep it ordered and clear, in order to allow anyone in the group to easily read it.
The best way to do it is:
- put a lot of comments, characterizing them with some hierarchy (bigger box of comments for main sections, for instance) that communicates what you’re working on, and describes what each part of the code does.

// SERVER / CLIENT ////////////////////////////////////////////// // Starts a server on port 10002 // Please note: only clients need to know a target IP address, // the server, just listens to a given port server = new Server(this, 10002); //client = new Client(this, "172.16.248.227", 10002); serverRunning = true; println("server starting"); ...

- divide the code in different independent tabs; this allows the members of a group to work separately and, in the end, just add the content of each tab into the main code.

- give intuitive names to tabs (e.g.: mouseListener), functions (e.g.: activeFlex()) and variables. When the code became longer, we could easily find the right line just with the Find… command available in Processing and Arduino, by typing in the name of the variables or functions we had to work on.

Why you shouldn’t connect two Arduino boards to the same computer
Our project has many different technological parts. In one of our last prototypes we wanted to try to connect the solenoid circuit to all the rest of the installation, to see how it would work with all its components connected (our final prototype has the solenoid part separated from all the rest, just to prove the point).
We had to use two different Arduino board, one with the solenoids and one with all the flex sensors and the LEDs.
It didn’t work. All the values from our sensors were weakened. It looked like the two Arduino board were in conflict, or that there wasn’t enough power for both of them.


Tips for an elegant prototype


We have a lot of wires inside our installation. To make everything less untidy and complicated, we twsited the two wires  (negative and positive) of each sensor together. We used a girl’s hair-plaiting machine!


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