Interaction technology

Course goals

The objectives of the course are:

• To acquire basic and advanced soldering skills.
• To learn the basic properties of the most common electronic components, sensors and actuators and to be able to build basic electronic circuits with these.
• To learn to program a microcontroller and learn about its possibilities (I/O pins, communication protocols, memory types, interrupts, WiFi stack) and limitations (memory size, single threadedness), as well as to gain knowledge of a number of microcontroller specific topics (delays, timers, scheduling, interrupts, debouncing, timer roll-over).
• To learn to build an embedded system that interfaces with an existing device, as well as to learn to make choices in light of a limited supply of hardware resources and stringent functional requirements.
• To learn the workings, possibilities and limitations of one of the main protocols of the Internet of Things (MQTT) and how to use this protocol in an embedded system.
• To learn to build an IoT platform based on a diverse set of MQTT clients
• To learn to research and understand user needs for a specific interactive device.
• To learn to conduct successful gesture elicitation.
• To learn to evaluate the final prototype.
• To have fun exploring the world of physical computing and Internet of Things.

Assessment
60%: two practical assignments
40%: two written exams

The following rules apply:

• You need a 6 or higher to pass the course.
• Weighted averages from 5 up to 6 are rounded to the nearest integer (5 or 6).
• Other weighted averages are rounded to .1
• Weighted average of assignments must be at least 4.
• Weighted average of exams must be at least 4.
• All assignments need to be submitted, including assignment 0.
• There is no retake for the assignments.
• If only 1 exam is missed, the final grade is AANV.
• There is a retake for the exams. You are only eligible for the retake exam if your final grade is between 4 and 5, or AANV.
• The retake exam consists of two parts: one to compensate a missed/low grade for exam 1 and one to compensate a missed/low grade for exam 2.
• Unless there are special arrangements, you can do a maximum of one retake part and thus compensate only a single exam. This will be the part that compensates for your lowest or missed exam grade.

Content

One of the basic components of computer systems is the interaction between human users and the systems.
Good interaction does not only provide enjoyable experiences but also increase productivity and efficiency. A field that focuses on developing computer interactions is called Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This course is part of HCI yet emphasizing on the technological aspects rather than the human aspects.
The course focuses on different types of interaction technology. 
You will be working on embedded technology, Internet of Things (IoT) and gesture-based interaction in assignments.
The practical assignments involve programming in the Arduino C/C++ language.

Course form
Lectures and practical sessions in a prototyping lab environment.

Additional information

NB Het Nederlands wordt als voertaal gebruikt in de colleges, de communicatie en de toetsing van deze cursus, tenzij betrokken docenten deze taal onvoldoende beheersen. Het gebruikte cursusmateriaal zal typisch Engelstalig zijn.

As this course has limited capacity due to the hardware involved, and we want to prevent no-shows as much as possible, students who enroll for this course will be asked via email to confirm their participation a few weeks before the start of the course.