Week 4
A Pair of Eyes
This week I’m on a mission to get a PAIR of eyes up and running. This time, I opted for two smaller screens, but with higher resolution, and they have colour.
Something I realised was harder than expected was the wiring. One screen is fine, but adding a second? In hindsight, it wasn’t the worst, but when you don’t have much knowledge about Arduino wiring, it gets confusing.
For example, figuring out where to place the pins when both screens need to connect to similar points on the Arduino was quite tricky. It felt like everything was overlapping.
Honestly, it wasn’t too difficult once I understood how the breadboard works, but in the moment, it felt quite overwhelming.
But we push through. I managed to get both screens wired correctly and turning on. Now, on to the eye animation.
I found some code online for a pair of eyes by Bob Davis. Thanks to him for sharing it: https://bobdavis321.blogspot.com/search?q=eyes
I used his code as a base and adjusted it according to what I had in mind.
(put his video here)
I didn’t incorporate the distance sensor for this iteration. Instead, I used the code as it is for now and adapted it to fit the size of my two screens, just to see if it would work. It took a while, but it did work.
A couple of things I don’t really like right now: because the code had to be modified slightly, the eye shape looks very angular, which doesn’t look very good.
The other issue is the animation. Maybe it’s because the code was changed, but the opening and closing feels a bit off. It looks like it’s not only closing horizontally, but also vertically.
I’ll have to fix that on Monday, along with incorporating the distance sensor.
But overall, I’ve got something that’s starting to work.