Progress slot 2: further board testing, data-analyzing program development and music effect testing

1. Further board testing

We proceeded to work further on board testing after we've finalized our project idea, in order to build up individual sensing parts to be combined into the DJ table later on.

The OpenCapSense board with the eight ports connected to respective sensors

In our project, we are going to make use of the maximum of eight sensors altogether for the gesture sensing and parameter controlling. Unlike in the past, we this time fully utilized the ports to develop a best motion sensing effect under the hardware limitation.

Four of the sensors

Testing of the motion sensing effect

2. Data-analyzing program development

Whilst we were working on the hardware part, we were in a mean time also developing our program for the data mining and data analysis. We realized the limitations of our current program - it reads data instantaneously from the eight ports and updates the data values in real time. However, with only raw data, it is impossible for us to observe any meaningful trends/ draw any conclusions. Besides, it is also not accurate to link user actions to the increase/ decrease in amplitudes of the waveforms as the change in waveform amplitudes are affected by a groups of factors (e.g. surface area of the approaching object, climate). We understand that if we want to find out the relationship between waveform patterns and the actions of the users, the only way is to relate the actions to the change in pattern trends instead of the change in absolute values (i.e. to analyze in an analog manner).

This is why we worked to optimize our program - we wanted to include real-time data analysis to be shown in line graphs in order to analyze user actions and assign meaningful system reactions to create music effects.

UI of our latest program

With the new function on the bottom part of the box, we can now directly find out the change in trends when a certain action is carried out. This is going to be crucial to our project development.

3. Music effect testing

Apart from the hardware and analyzing parts, we've also been working on some music effect testing. We wrote C# programs to create a UI that allows importing and playing of songs. We also included the volume changing function in our program, and it succeeded when we tested it on our OpenCapSense kit.

OpenCapSense FYP Finalized Application Idea

OpenCapSense FYP Application

DJ Table

Objective

After second thought, we decided to amend our project idea to apply the techonology into doing something interesting. We thought of applications in different areas, for the youngs and the elderly, used indoor and outdoor, for individuals and groups of people… Our only concern is that the idea can make use of the strengths of the opencap sense kit to a greatest extent.

We finally came up with the idea of a DJ table, which is roughly the same by means of function when compared with those you can find from the market. But our idea differentiates itself from all the other similar products in terms of controlling method. We are combining the capacitance sensing property of the kit with the various music effect a DJ table can create - instead of simply adjusting the knobs, we wish to present a sening table that allows users to do air-float gestures to trigger changes in parameters such as the adjustment in volumes, fast-forwarding and echo effect.

What is special in our product is that it enables effects to come with the natural body movements of humans when they listen to music, like the unconscious making of beats and the natural dancing-like movements. We believe that our OpencapSense kit application can bring the user experience of the DJ table to a higher level, and create more fun for the parties!

Details of the project

Since the OpenCapSense kit has its own limitations, we can at most connect to eight sensors at one time. It thus may not be that ideal if we assign one sensor to be responsible for one single function. In order to allow more possibilities of functions and gestures, we tried to correlate the sensors such that the functions are triggered by a series of sensing activities instead of the change in one single sensor. We came up with a number of prototypes as shown below:

Prototype A

Prototype B

Prototype C

Prototype D

Prototype A shows the simpliest assignment of sensors - each one is responsible for one single action.

Prototype B, C and D allows switching of controlling parameters with gestures (more than one sensors carrying out multiple sensing at one time to detect a particular set of body movements).

After a series of testing, we finally decided to adopt prototype D for our sensor assignment as we believed that such an arrangement can provide the users with the most freedom in gesturing.

We haven’t finalized the functions of our DJ table yet, but at this stage it will include some basic features such as volume control, play-forward/play-back function and fade-in/fade-out effect.