A lot of progress has been made this week for the haptics project! The workflow for the Arduino IDE has been setup, all of the necessary parts were ordered, and I even got a bit of programming for the servos done. Working with the Arduino IDE again after switching from Eclipse is a bit of a pain. I have always worked with Eclipse to do my Arduino programming but since the Arduino app came out for the Android mobile devices I was a bit curious on how it would perform on my Nexus tablet. Props to those guys who worked to get it on that platform 🙂

Preparing the Arduino IDE Workflow

This is just a short guide on how I like to set up my workflow on the Arduino IDE platform. I’m used to programming with classes on the Eclipse IDE so I was really surprised to find out that you can’t simply include your classes in the Arduino IDE and have it all work. What you need to do is to create your own custom libraries. The Arduino IDE has an option to import custom libraries through the menu: Sketch > Import Library. This functionality makes a copy of the folder you chose and places it in your default windows folder: My Documents\Arduino\libraries\. So if you want your classes to be more self contained, you’ll have to change this directory by modifying your sketchbook directory in File > Preferences.

After that is done, create a folder in your sketchbook directory named “libraries” if it hasn’t been done so already. From now on, any c++ files you place in the “libraries” folder can be included on your .pde file as a custom library. One important note is that the .pde file must contain all the includes in your custom library. When the IDE compiles, it makes a temporary folder and copies of all the includes you’ve listed . If your include files are not all listed in the .pde you will get file missing errors.

Bill of Materials

The parts for the project is finally finalized! The biggest change I made to the design so far is that I removed the vibrator component completely. I did this after realizing that I can simulate vibrations using the servo motor instead which allows me to make the device smaller, less complicated, and less expensive. The bill of materials for this project is presented to you below.

I was able to source out a couple of items on this list. The items highlighted are being ordered. I even put together a small demo to see if everything comes together. It’s looking good so far.

Gant Chart

Due to the time constraints I have for this project I was advised to set up a Gant Chart and some milestones for myself. Hopefully this will keep motivated  till the end of my project. My goal for this week is to start on the electronic schematic and the mechanical modelling.