Discussion - Assignment 2
We have had some troubles with implementing our ideas. One problem was that we could find a working pressure sensor, so we used a light sensor instead although they don’t work the same. We also couldn’t find a working LCD-display and had to borrow one from another group during the demo and during the recording of the film.
We found a children’s bike we could use to implement our functions on, but since the phidgets are relatively large and needs to be connected to a computer, the bike isn’t able the go anywhere and if we would take it outside, the phidgets would break because of the rain and the snow. Also, the bike became very ugly and vulnerable, with all the cables and sensors on it. A true ubiquitous bike would have all the sensors and cables hidden.
That is one of the current issues with ubiquitous computing today. Sensors and computers are not small enough to be invisible, and if they are, they are too expensive for most people to buy. Sensors and computers in a bike also have to be very durable, resisting rain, snow, cold and heat as well as crashes. We have tried to solve this by hiding as many of the cables and sensors as we could, but with little success.
In conclusion our prototype is just that, a prototype, and it will take a lot of work and a lot of better resources before you could ride the Smart Bike to school. Many of the functions we have implemented exist in one form or another, but always as extra accessories to the bike. In a real Smart Bike all these functions will have to be integrated, making them a part of the design and thus more invisible than they are now.
