Oops...questions
Sorry left this out in the last post. -Jen
(Sent these from the wrong address earlier and they didn't post, sorry!)
Tried out the electromagnet configuration I illustrated yesterday, with not particularly exciting results. I was using a 9v battery hooked up to a small nail coiled with about 32g wire. I went with such a small scale because if this is going to be part of a garment, it has to be pretty discreet and lie flat easily. Once I had the two ends of the wire attached to the leads of the battery, I tried to pick up some nails with them (it's like 5th grade science class all over again, I know). It worked the first time (that blurry thing hanging from the end of the coil-wrapped nail in the last picture is another nail) but didn't work again after that. I checked the battery, no problem there, exposed more of the wire (stripping off more insulation), tried different gauges of wire but still no luck. I had some pupil sized magnets cut up and ready to test with but never got back to that point unfortunately. I'm really not sure what the problem was. I'm just going to have to test with different size nails or other materials and different wire wrapping patterns I suppose. Failing that, I'll bug Joel Murphy some more.
Once I do get this part figured out, the next step is diving into Arduino so I can figure out how to connect this to my eye-tracking setup.
Unfortunately I hit a big snag in developing my "Highlander" prototype today, as I pretty much have the worst hosting service ever. I started building it out based on the flow chart I posted yesterday, but I ran into database problems. I can't connect to my server to update things, so I may try a different approach for the time being. Frustrated that a few hours of work and a 45-minute phone call w/ Tech Support have yet to resolve my issues. I'm going to try to work on it more later tonight and try and find a solution. Sorry this is such a lame post!
Here's a quick track I made on ProTools with Reason.
There's no narrative arc to it yet.