Mission Briefing
Our current mission is to build a custom controller for the Smilie-O-Mat sketch we wrote in the previous project. We will make use of an Arduino board (an inexpensive board using an AVR microcontroller), a button, and some variable resistors. We will connect the Arduino board to our computer through USB and create a simple protocol for controlling the facial parameters of our smiley.
Why Is It Awesome?
As already mentioned in the introduction, the mouse is a great and versatile input device, but sometimes it's not the best one available. Drawing an image is far more fun with a pressure-sensitive tablet, playing racing games is more fun with a steering wheel and some pedals, and making music is far easier with a keyboard controller, just to name a few examples. Sometimes we need a specialized controller to interact in a faster or more natural way with our data or our processes.
Knowing how to interface sliders, buttons, and knobs with a computer, enables us to optimize our workspace...
