DOGBOWL- final handin

My dog Dooley died earlier this year aged 16 years old. In his old age he was extremely lazy. He spent his days snoring curled up in the corner of his room on his favorite sheepskin rug. The only time he was active was when he needed relieve himself outside and waiting for/eating his dinner. Dinner is the arguably the most important time for a dog and my applet shows the eagerness of the dog to get his meal. At dinner time Dooley would wander up to me and just stare, while his tail oscillated with encouragement. Over the last few years I have taken to drawing pictures in my notebooks of him so I thought this sketch-pad aesthetic would be a good correlation between my personal experience of him.

My Arduino was setup to receive signals from a photocell. Photocells measure changes in light conditions and output a corresponding value. By adjusting the range of the values I could scale the numbers to suit the movie-clip I made in flash. As the numbers increased, so did the timeline and therefore created a realistic interaction between the user and Dooley. As the user pics up the bowl he anticipates  being fed.

To house my Arduino and photocell I needed to use something suitable. The dog-bowl is an iconic object of domesticated dogs in the modern world. It’s the grail, the lifeblood of their survival and to a dog it is its prize possession.  I have done my best to house the circuitry as professionally as possible. I tacked the arduino onto the base of the bowl and angled the photocell toward the front.  I then created a synthetic dog-food to fill it. The dog bowl looks as if it is functioning in its original material way until you see the USB cable connected: its virtual potential is discovered.

The user will see Dooley on screen asleep while the bowl is on the table. As they pick the bowl up the light increases and the dog reacts by waking up and gradually getting up. As you move away with the bowl his tail wags as he anticipates his dinner. If I were to continue this project I would have liked to create different inserts in the bottom of the bowl which would change the resistance in the circuit. There would be different reactions to getting meat, water and nothing at all. I am pleased to have come up with a good use of the photocell and it’s helped to make a lively interactive project.