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- Paper
- Graphite (Almost all pencils contain graphite. Try an assortment
of pencils, some work better than others.)
- Cricket
- Display
- Alligator-clip sensor
- Cricket sound recorder or music box or lights or motors - what ever
you would like to activate with your drawing!
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First experiment with a simple line. Use a pencil to draw a heavy
line on a piece of paper. Attach an alligator clip sensor and a display
to
your
Cricket.
Write
a program
to display
the
sensor
value, then experiment with touching the sensor to the pencil line. Move
the two clips closer together and farther apart along the line. How do
the sensor values change?
(Tip: if you aren't getting a range of sensor values, try making the line heavier. Or try another pencil.) |
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On this test drawing, I wrote down the values I got at each "branch." I
kept making the lines heavier and thicker until I could get four distinct
values when I touched the sensor to each branch. |
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I used the values I got from my test drawing to write a
program that would change the color of a tri-color LED. For example,
a low sensor
value might make the light bright pink and a high one make it green.This
larger image of the program is much easier to see. |
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When I tried this with museum visitors, kids made all kinds of drawings
to try. Some worked really well right away, and some had to be re-drawn
to get them to work. Because kids could see right away (in the colored
light
and
the
display)
how well or poorly their drawing conducted, they
could keep revising drawings and trying new ones. |
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We soon covered two huge sheets of heavyweight paper with pencil drawings. |
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Will a long, skinny animal drawing work? What about a drawing of a big,
round animal? |
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I made this drawing to tell a story. One alligator clips onto the end
of the road and you touch the other clip to the house, the factory, the
barn
and the city to hear the story. The Cricket is programmed to play a different
message for each of four sensor values. |
