The iPod Eagle Has Landed

Big news in iPod land -- the eagle has landed (i.e. I've delivered the iPod and assistive remote to Hannah). I got to spend some time with Hannah and her family last week when I went to demonstrate the remote, and from what I saw, it looks like the project is a big success. Both Hannah and her younger sister were mesmerized by the magic of controlling the music with a big green switch. Hannah's parents are going to keep me informed about how it's going and what improvements I should make for the next version. I have some pictures, but I haven't asked for permission to publish them yet, so no pictures of Hannah right now - maybe later. However, I do have some pictures of the spiffy cardboard housing created by the Adaptive Design Association. The housing was designed by intern Lulu Chin and full-time staff member Lillie ____ (I don't know Lillie's last name, but I'll find out!)

On the technical front, I've had a few requests for more specifics regarding my circuit using the arduino, so I finally got around to drawing the schematic. Note that I don't include the detailed iPod remote schematic - just that the three important lines are power, ground, and AUD (as specified on the remotes I hacked). For Hannah, we just used two switches - one for play/pause and one to advance the song. To allow for the possibility of using different switches at a later time, I used two mono-jacks in my circuit instead of the actual switches.



In addition, for this particular protoype, I needed my connections to be semi-permanent - meaning that all the wires need to be stable and secure in the arduino (and everywhere), as this is going to be used by a five-year-old. I don't want to be trekking uptown every couple of weeks to reconnect power or ground. But on the other hand, the functions that Hannah uses may change over time, so at some point I may need to remove and reprogram the arduino. I was about to get out my handy hot glue gun for the task when Tom Igoe gave me one of his Arduino Proto Shields -- once again, Tom saves the day. With this handy board, I can solder my wires to the shield and the pop the shield into the arduino with some header pins - good to go.