Reflection:
The very first step to creating this music box was to get started with the code, so I went during TA hours for help. Needless to say, I seemed to be going nowhere no matter what I tried, so I decided to work on the physical part, the box. I had one of the student workers help me and Lina (who also happened to be there) make our boxes using the laser cutter. However, we were not successful because we kept having issues with the machines (yes, we tried two different ones). After many failed attempts, I decided to go back to my dorm and rest. The next day I went back to fimble to work on the laser cutting again, this time everything was working a lot more smoothly and I was ready to start working on the coding part. I decided to try a different song; I chose baby shark since it was simple. Once I got the notes figured out I tried editing the very bottom of the code but it wasn’t quite working yet. I waited until the next class to ask Audry for help, and there was just a small detail with the light value and the sign. After changing I thought I would be done, but Audry told me I also needed to change something else above it.
Overall, this process was very frustrating, no matter how many times I seemed to change the code nothing was working. At some point I made it do the opposite of what I wanted, instead of playing music in the light, it would start playing once it was in the dark, but I believed it was partly because I changed the light value sign again. Then again, it was just a trial-and-error process, I didn’t bother to plan out what could possibly change if I altered something in the code. Even when I was changing the song, all I did was search up the notes online and hope the song would play normally. I ended up trying three different songs: baby shark, Star Wars theme, and finally only by Lee Hi, which was very hard to put together, but it sounds somewhat similar, especially the beats. Baby shark was not convincing, and I couldn’t get the Star Wars theme song to sound anywhere similar. In the end I asked a peer for help for the coding part, but it was still missing something because it only plays it once and then stops. (not entirely sure what to change)
Process, Final, and Code:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yA3Cm4l9C2kwiuv5O7vSSx2UaRWPz-FKRasvEdji95A/edit?usp=sharing
Leave a Reply