We met with Yanfeng, Hyungsin and Mi Youn and talked about the bi-directional remote communication and plant responses to local and remote stimuli. I'm cc'ing Ken on this email to keep him in the loop about where we're at. Goal for this week (towards eyedrum): - Get the local interaction fully working - Get some sample code to NYU so they can start building remote interfaces in parallel with our development What needs to be done for NYU: - Sample code to demonstrate how to read an outgoing message (i.e. the current garden status in XML form) - Sample code to demonstrate how to send an incoming message (i.e. remote control message sent to a specific plant cluster on a specific mound) -- Ali * Here's what we determined about how plants respond to proximity and audio: Proximity response: (Hyungsin, looking at the docs, I realized that proximity and not audio should be tied to orientation...) - Sociable plants: lean towards you if you come closer - Shy plants: lean away when you come closer - Bored/angry plants: lean slightly towards you when you come closer, but quickly move back to normal Audio response: - Sociable plants: respond positively to happy chatter -> Volume: average volume => growth -> Tempo: faster speech => growth - Shy plants: respond positively to soothing speech -> Volume: quieter => growth -> Tempo: slower => growth - Bored/angry plants: respond positively to angry yelling -> Volume: louder => growth -> Tempo: faster => growth * Here's what we determined about the bi-directional messages to/from the remote interfaces - Outgoing messages (garden status sent to remote GUIs) -> 3 mounds with 3 plant clusters each -> 4 bytes of data per plan cluster - blue (remote interaction) LED (0-255) - green (local interaction) LED (0-255) - height (0-255) - orientation (0-255) - Incoming messages (commands sent from remote GUIs, which are analogous to the information read from the sensors in the physical space) -> 3 mounds with 3 plant clusters each -> 3 bytes of data per plant cluster - proximity (0-255) - audio volume (0-255) - audio tempo (0-255) - The plant brain in each mound integrates the remote and local information as described below... * Here's what we determined about combining the remote and local stimuli: - Remote control: represented by the blue LED - Local control: represented by the green LED - Default state: there is no remote message, so local interaction takes over (represented by brightness of green LED depending on level of activity) - Remote control state: when remote messages are received, they take over for a while => blue LED glows => remote control continues for 15 seconds and then fades out and local interaction gradually takes over again