Tech Exploration
Thanks to the rebirth of analog electronics and companies like Arduino, Sparkfun, and the Raspberry Pi, we now have new ways of bridging the gap between the physical and digital worlds. We can now make any object smart, similarly to the way our phones and our cars have now become smart. Often people do not understand what I mean, so I always use the example of the plant. Using analog electronics and sensors connected to the internet, we can take a common house plant and have it tweet at you or send you a text message whenever it needs water. This is only one example, but there are endless ways of using electronics to collect data, make objects interactive or even give them the ability to communicate.
At Team One, we had our room tweet as we entered and again when we would leave; that way, people would know if we were in our lab, at our desk, or out of the office. We even hacked a Mattel toy and turned it into an EEG, also known as a brain scanner. At DYL, we used the Raspberry Pi to sync our keycards with the time clock and even monitor VOIP calls. I may not be a Mechanical Engineer, but I most definitely understand the basics, and more importantly, I understand how we can use them to breathe life into an idea.
