Heartree: Finalising Physical Components (Studio 3 / Professional Preproduction - Week 11)

By Helen Kwok

This week was all about finalising all the physical components of Heartree ready for installation set up and filming. After filming the pre-launch demo for the pitch to council, I realised that my wiring connections needed to be stronger and more secure. Therefore, I reworked the wiring that connected the ropes to the wires, using a combination of a makeshift cardboard breadboard, copper tape, threading the exposed wires through the copper tape, and securing it using insulated tape.

All wires have now been cut to length, with each rope requiring three wires in total - the sensor, plus power and ground for the lights - while the tree trunk sensor requires five wires - the sensor, ground, and power for the white rim light, inner heartbeat and outer heartbeat lights.

Heartree requires the following physical components for installation (direct connection to mains power is preferred, but this set up is using the laptop's battery power only):

• Laptop (fully charged)
• Bluetooth Speaker
• Arduino Uno with breadboard for easy wiring connections (soldering would be preferred in future development)
• 5m USB-A to USB-B cable
• Tree Trunk Sensor (with 4m wiring, and 5m rope to tie it around the tree trunk)
• 6 x Rope Sensors (with 8m, 7.5m, 7m, 6m, 5m, 4.5m wiring respectively)
• Playable City Brunswick AR Tracker (hand symbol)