Collaborative Design and Creative Expression with Arduino Microcontrollers

Long Project

Overview

Students form groups of four to six and work for twenty hours on a final project. We help facilitate this by discussing techniques for collaborative design, guiding the class in an improv activity, lead a brainstorming activity for the whole class to help students identify collaborators, allow students ample time to self-organize into teams. In addition, teams are provided with a $200 budget for buying hardware components that they would require apart from the components that we already have on our inventory. Students then have 20 hours of class time to develop an idea for a project, to create the project, and to prepare to present about their project in front of external visitors. The capstone of the class is a final five-minute presentation that each group must give about their project in front of the entire class and external visitors.

The following project demonstrations are courtesy of the participants, including MIT students, and used with permission.

	Long Project: Introduction In this video, instructors provide some context about the student projects and presentations, including what information they should cover in the presentations.
	Long Project 1: Awesome Light Show Touch Game In this video, one of the student teams demonstrates their project, a light show touch game which is synced to a counter that keeps score, every time you touch the red box (which randomly changes position).
	Long Project 2: Hand Motion Controlled Car In this video, one of the student teams demonstrates their project, a gesture controlled car.
	Long Project 3: LED Framed Light Display Part 1 In this video, one of the student teams demonstrates their project, a framed LED display. This is the first part of the presentation.
	Long Project 3: LED Framed Light Display Part 2 In this video, one of the student teams demonstrates their project, a framed LED display. This is the second part of the presentation.
	Long Project 4: Punching Glove In this video, one of student team demonstrates their project, a punching glove which measures various metrics such as the intensity of your punches and the speed and number of punches and so on.
	Long Project 5: Quadcopter In this video, one of the student team talks about how quadcopters can be useful in daily lives.