Making a custom switch and animation for yoga mat sensor
Starting with the yoga mat sensor I made in assignment 2, which used a “button” of increasing resistance to switch a LED light to “low” (so long as the ends of the Yoga mat are touching) I developed a sensor for assignment 3 that records when a yoga mat has been unrolled AND calculates the amount of time since the yoga mat was last unrolled. The goal of this sensor is to remind the owner of the mat to get back into their yoga flow.
Step 1:
- Assign the “button of increasing resistance” from assignment 2 as a source of input to read data from the serial port and change the color of a rectangle when the button is pressed and released (aka when the yoga mat is rolled up).
Step 2:
Develop a program in Processing to:
- Display an animation to indicate the last change in button state.
3 screen shots (above) from the animation indicating “time up”
Next Steps:
Display an animation to indicate a set amount of time since the last change in button state. To do this I will need to implement an object-oriented timer into my code that will count the time since the button is pressed and display an animation to indicate a set amount of time since the last change in button state.
As my goal for the above will be to reminds the owner of the yoga mat to get back into their yoga flow, the timer I would like to set will be for 48 hrs.
To implement this, I will need to consider the physical impact of adding a timer to a yoga mat.
This will present numerous spatial/ physical design challenges related to complementing the current practice of a yogi. These challenges include:
- Making the sensor removable (so that the mat can still be washed)
- Making the sensor lightweight and attractive
- Designing the housing of the sensor so that it enables the yogi to close and open the mat
- Programming the application to account for “accidental” mat opening and closings while still allowing the timer to execute and realize the goal of awakening the yogi and his mat 
In future assignments, I would still like to experiment with measuring resistance and creating a sensor with the resistance as a kind of pressure sensor to measure the distribution of pressure on the Yoga mat from one end to another.